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Poland Transportation and Communications
In 1989 Poland had 26,644 kilometers of railroads,
including
11,016 adapted for electric traction. The country also had
159
thousand kilometers of hard-surface public roads, 6,846
kilometers of oil and gas pipelines, and 3,997 kilometers
of
regulated inland waterways
(see
fig. 15). Polish State
Railroads,
a state monopoly, ran 1,920 electric locomotives, 2,567
diesel
locomotives, and 198 steam locomotives, 136,128 freight
cars, and
5,530 passenger cars. The main intercity lines were well
serviced, and trains generally ran on schedule. In the
postcommunist reform era, fares and freight rates were
gradually
increased and subsidies reduced accordingly.
In 1989 the Polish merchant fleet included 249 freight
ships
totaling 4 million deadweight tons and nine ferries
totaling
18,000 deadweight tons. Regular international lines
reached
London, Asian ports, Australia, and some African and Latin
American countries. The inland fleet included sixty-nine
passenger ships, twenty-six tugboats, 387 motor units, 325
motor
barges, and 1,055 barges. The major Baltic ports are
Szczecin,
Gdansk, Gdynia, and Swinoujscie, and the major inland
ports are
Gliwice on the Gliwice Canal (Kanal Gliwice), Wroclaw on
the Oder
River, and Warsaw on the Vistula River.
The national airline, Polish Airlines (Polskie Linie
Lotnicze, commonly known as LOT), flew forty-six
Soviet-made
airplanes in 1989. LOT purchased its first Boeing airliner
in
1990 at the beginning of a modernization program that
included
replacement of a large part of the fleet, construction of
a
modern airport, Okecie International, in Warsaw by
contract with
a German firm, and updating kitchens and cargo facilities.
By
1992 the airline's transatlantic lines were served by
Westernmade jets, although LOT did not expect to meet overall
Western
standards of air travel for several years. In 1989 only
eighty of
Poland's 140 operating airports had permanent-surface
runways.
Five airports offered runways longer than 3,600 meters.
The
largest airports are at Warsaw, Rzeszów, Kraków, Koszalin,
Slupsk, Zielona Góra, Gdansk, Katowice, Poznan, and
Bydgoszcz.
National telecommunications networks were neglected
badly
during the communist era. In 1989 Poland had only
5,039,000
telephones, of which 544,000 were in rural areas.
Beginning in
1990, however, several major contracts with Western firms
promised substantial improvement.
The national radio and television broadcast system was
entirely state-owned and state-controlled until 1990. In
the
restructured telecommunications program developed in 1991
and
1992, part of the system remained under state control. But
the
new system also licensed private broadcast stations, whose
programming received minimal state oversight. The first
private
television station began broadcasting in Wroclaw in 1990.
At that
time, the state-run Polish Radio and Television Network
was
broadcasting over four radio and two television channels.
Color
television was broadcast through the Secam system, and the
Eutelsat satellite system provided a hookup with Western
Europe.
About 10 million television sets and 11.1 million radio
receivers
were registered in 1988, and 3,500 licenses for satellite
television receivers were current. Some eighty-two
television
transmitters were in operation in 1990. Radio programs
were
broadcast in English, Russian, German, Lithuanian,
Finnish, and
French as well as Polish.
Data as of October 1992
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