Highways in Poland
Motorways differ from expressways in their technical parameters like designated speed, permitted road curvature, lane widths or minimal distances between interchanges.
Except for the single-carriageway expressways, both types of highways fulfill the definition of a motorway as specified by OECD, WRA or Vienna Convention.
As of 2024, one notable case of a substandard highway remains: Notable historical cases are: Since 2023, all state-owned highways are free for vehicles up to 3.5 tons of permissible maximum weight[30][31] (for a passenger car with a trailer, the joint permissible maximum weight of the car and the trailer must not exceed 3.5 tons[32]).
Using e-Toll is obligatory for buses as well as all vehicles with maximum permissible weight exceeding 3.5 tons (including the trailer) while driving on the Polish roads (not just the highways).
The first plans of creation of a national highway network in Poland were conceived in the interwar period: The main promoter of this concept was Professor Melchior Wladyslaw Nestorowicz of the Warsaw University of Technology, who organized three Road Congresses, during which a group of specialists discussed the creation of the network.
On 5 March 1939, in the trade magazine Drogowiec, Professor Nestorowicz proposed a very ambitious plan for the construction of almost 5,000 kilometres of category I and II roads, based on similar programmes in Germany and Italy.
However, after 1938, warfare expenses meant little money would be invested into any infrastructure and only one 9 km single-carriageway piece west of Gliwice (now A4) was constructed.
In Poland, a 28 km stretch between Warlubie and Osiek (now DW214) was constructed in 1937 – 1939 in the motorway standard of the time (today not considered a highway) with a concrete surface, which was designed by Italian engineer Piero Puricelli.
The roads opened in the 1980s were the first motorways and expressways which generally meet the contemporary standards (at least with respect to their more important attributes), although in multiple cases the poor quality of their construction forced major renovations to be performed as soon as within the first 20 years of operation.
The implementation of these plans, however, came at a very slow pace: throughout the 1980s, only an average of 20 km (12 mi) of highways in the whole country were being opened per year.
Szczecin bypass (A6) and section Olszyna – Krzywa (then named A12, now A4/A18) were promoted to motorways, even though at that time the majority of their lengths was in bad shape, laid with the original concrete surface from the 1930s with no significant works having been performed on any of them throughout the whole communist period.
These years, the existing scattered pieces of highways began to converge into the basis of the future network: A large number of expressway bypasses of towns were also constructed at this time.
The main focus was on developing connections between Poland's largest cities, especially those serving as host venues of UEFA Euro 2012, as well as on extending A4 towards Ukraine.
The sections opened in 2011 – 2015 belonged to the following highways: After the peak of investments before Euro 2012, very few new contracts for road construction were signed in 2012 and 2013.
The main focus was on construction of new highways in the less populated eastern Poland, including the international routes Via Carpatia and Via Baltica.
