HRJ is intended to facilitate the liberalisation of the passenger rail market resulting from the implementation of the EU Fourth Railway Package in Poland. This concerns not only the possibility of selecting operators through tenders for lines operated under public service contracts, i.e. PSO — public service obligation — but also competition in the market between railway undertakings operating within the same transport corridor.

For this reason, the planned service network developed under the HRJ project includes both public service operations, or PSO services, and commercial services, understood as the assumed allocation of capacity for specific train relations.

At the current stage of work, a preliminary assessment has been carried out to identify whether a given service line has the potential to operate commercially or should be provided under a public service obligation. These assumptions will be verified in subsequent stages of the project in order to define the target vision for the organisation of the long-distance passenger rail market in Poland and to delimit PSO and commercial services.

The potential for commercial operation exists primarily on those system service lines, or groups of lines within a single transport corridor, where demand is high enough to allow more than one railway undertaking to operate in a stable and profitable manner, ensuring competition, while also maintaining the desired high frequency of services, including outside peak hours.

An exception to this principle — “commercial operation means competition” — may apply to sections of the network where the potential for abuse of a monopolistic position is limited, or where the effects of such behaviour would not conflict with the objectives of the state’s transport policy. This usually applies to extensions of service lines beyond the main relations connecting the largest centres, or to international services.

The most obvious candidates for commercial operation are corridors connecting Warsaw with Poland’s other largest cities and metropolitan areas: the Tricity, Poznań, Wrocław, the Upper Silesian and Zagłębie Metropolis, and Kraków.

The arguments in favour of commercial operation on these relations include:

• very high travel demand,
• attractive rail journey times on high-speed lines;
• a significant share of passengers with a high willingness to pay,
• the use of railway lines with high capacity, with the exception of the route to the Tricity via railway line No. 9.

The main issues requiring further analysis at subsequent stages of work include:

• services to towns located between the main centres, where commercial railway undertakings may not provide a sufficient level of services, such as Opoczno, Prabuty or Jarocin,
• extensions beyond the main cities, which are socially desirable but may not be profitable and therefore may not be operated commercially, such as Warsaw – Jelenia Góra, Warsaw – Słupsk or Wrocław – Lublin.