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Wikipedia / Highways in Poland

Controlled-access highways in Poland are part of the national roads network and they are divided into motorways and expressways. Both types of highways feature grade-separated interchanges with all other roads, emergency lanes, feeder lanes, wildlife crossings and dedicated roadside rest areas. Motorways differ from expressways in their technical parameters like designated speed, permitted road curvature, lane widths or minimal distances between interchanges. Moreover, expressways might have single-carriageway sections in case of low traffic densities (as of 2026, such sections constitute 3% of the highway network).

The development of modern highways began in the 1970s, but proceeded very slowly under the communist rule and for the first years afterwards: between 1970 and 2000 only 434km of highways (5% of the planned network) were constructed in total. Further 1050km (13% of the network) were opened from 2001 to 2010, followed by 2773km (34% of the network) constructed between 2011 and 2020. It is planned to open about 2450km (30%) in the 2020s, while the last about 1500 km (18%) would be completed in the 2030s.

, there are 5,585.4km of motorways and expressways in operation (68% of the intended network), while contracts for construction of a further 1033km (13% of the network) are ongoing.

Except for the single-carriageway expressway sections, both types of highways fulfill the definition of a motorway as specified by OECD, WRA or Vienna Convention. Speed limits in Poland are 140km/h on motorways and 120km/h on expressways (100km/h for single-carriageway expressway sections). Some motorway stretches are tolled.

Technical parameters

  • Motorways are public roads with controlled access that are designated for motor vehicles only, and feature two carriageways with at least two continuous lanes each, divided by a median. They have no single-level intersections with any roads or other forms of land and water transport, and have wildlife crossings constructed above the road. They feature emergency lanes and feeder lanes, and are equipped with dedicated roadside rest areas. Motorways are the only roads in Poland that use a blue background on road signs; others use green road signs.

  • Expressways share most of the characteristics of motorways, differing mainly in that

  • Expressways are designated for lower speed than motorways. For example, the road curvature can be more severe and the lanes are usually narrower (3.5m vs 3.75m). Emergency lanes are also narrower (2.5m vs 3m) and in exceptional situations expressways might not have them at all.

  • Expressways can have a single carriageway on sections with low traffic density.

  • Motorways can have interchanges only with main roads, and the distance between interchanges is typically not less than 15km (or 5km near major cities), while expressways typically have more frequent interchanges. In exceptional situations, expressways might not have dedicated feeder lanes on interchanges.

List of motorways and expressways

In 2004, the government published the ordinance defining the planned highway network of length about . Notable changes introduced in later amendments include re-routing S8 and adding S61 instead (a change related to the Rospuda Valley conflict), introducing S16, S52 and A/S50, as well as extending S5, S8 and S10, raising the total length to about . The planned network consists of 16 major highways (over 200km of intended length each): A1, S3, S5, S7, S11, S17, S19, S61 running north to south and A2/S2, A4, S6/A6, S8/A8, S10, S12, S16, S74 running west to east, as well as 9 shorter highways.

Cross-sections

As of 1st July 2026, the operational sections of highways feature the following cross-sections:

  • 7% (398km) – motorways and expressways with 2×3 or (occasionally) 2×4 or more lanes,

  • 90% (5041km) – motorways and expressways with 2×2 lanes,

  • 3% (149km) – single-carriageway expressways, of which 55km with dual-carriageway fragments (2×2) around the interchanges.

All single-carriageway expressways are constructed with allocated space for a possible upgrade to a dual-carriageway and all bridges above such highways are prepared to accommodate the second carriageway. Most of those sections are planned to be widened to full profile by 2033, the exceptions being S1 (near the Slovak border) and S22 (near the Kaliningrad Oblast border) where widening is currently not expected.

Substandard highways

Motorways and expressways constructed before 1999 do not have to fulfill technical parameters defined by the ministry ordinance. As of 2026, one notable case of a substandard highway remains:

  • A4 on the section Krzyżowa – Wrocław (103km) was constructed in years 1934 – 1937 (then the territory of Nazi Germany) and renovated in years 2002 – 2006. The road received new high quality surface but the geometry was kept unchanged and many overpasses above the motorway were kept. In effect, this part has no emergency lanes and the speed limit is decreased to 110km/h. Its full reconstruction (and widening to three lanes per direction) is scheduled for years 2027 – 2031.

Notable historical cases:

  • Expressways were formerly allowed to admit at-grade intersections with minor public roads in exceptional cases. The last such section which remained operational past 1999 was S3 near Szczecin (19km), opened in 1979, which featured two at-grade road intersections until the reconstruction conducted in years 2019 – 2020. Since 2020, all expressways (as well as motorways) in Poland only have grade-separated interchanges and the exception admitting at-grade intersections on expressways was formally removed from the ordinance in 2022.

  • A6 near Szczecin (29km) was constructed by Nazi Germany and kept using the original surface made of concrete slabs until the reconstruction conducted in years 1996 – 1999 and (easternmost fragment) 2017 – 2021.

  • A18 (70km) had its southern carriageway constructed by Nazi Germany. The northern carriageway was constructed in 2004 – 2006, while the southern carriageway kept using the original concrete slabs until the reconstruction conducted in years 2020 – 2023.

Speed limits

Other restrictions

  • Pedestrians, bicycles, mopeds, and agricultural vehicles are not allowed on motorways.

  • It is forbidden to stop except in extraordinary circumstances, or to travel backwards.

  • Towing is not allowed on motorways, but is permitted on expressways.

Tolls

Since 2023, all state-owned highways are free for vehicles up to 3.5 tons of permissible maximum weight (for a passenger car with a trailer, the joint permissible maximum weight of the car and the trailer must not exceed 3.5 tons). On some sections, old inactive infrastructure for toll collection is still in place.

The privately owned sections of A1, A2 and A4 are tolled. They are indicated by the motorway sign accompanied by the word Płatna.

Vehicles over 3.5 tons and buses

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). More details can be found on the e-Toll website.

Traffic volumes

Traffic volumes in Poland note rapid increase since the fall of communism in 1989: the annual average daily traffic recorded on the national roads network in 2025 is 14'880 vehicles per day, which amounts to 395% of the average traffic recorded in 1990. With the increasing traffic, the length of overburdened single-carriageway national roads had also been steadily increasing until reaching the maximum of 1389km in 2010. Due to the large number of highway sections opened after 2010, the length of overburdened roads has starated falling down for the first time in history, from 1389km in 2010 to 1121km in 2020.

The latest general measurement was conducted in 2025. The following highways recorded the highest volumes:The other highest and lowest recorded volumes were:

History

Before World War II

The first plans of creation of a national highway network in Poland were conceived in the interwar period: Plans 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. Nestorowicz sketched a map of the future system with the following routes:

First class roads would, according to the plans, consist of the following motorways (totalling some :

Second class roads would consist of the following motorways, totalling another :

In 1934, Nazi Germany started the construction of their motorway system, parts of which today form A18 and A4 to Wrocław (Breslau), as well as A6 (Szczecin bypass) and S22 (parts of the planned motorway to Königsberg). About half of them were constructed as single-carriageway with the intention of adding a second carriageway in later years. However, after 1938, warfare expenses meant little money would be invested into any infrastructure and only one 9km single-carriageway piece west of Gliwice (now A4) was constructed.In Poland, a 28km 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 motorway was planned to reach Gdynia, but the outbreak of the Second World War halted the plans.

1945 – 1972

The aforementioned fragments of the Third Reich motorways (about half of them with only the first carriageway constructed) became part of the territory of the communist Poland after the Potsdam conference in 1945. Most of the motorway bridges had been destroyed by the warfare, but only a few were repaired or rebuilt in the first post-war years. The bridge over Ina river was reconstructed in 1972, and those on S22 only between 1996 and 2003. Apart from the bridges, almost all the motorways were left in the same condition as they were in 1945 until the mid-1990s. The only road left from Nazi times that was completed by the People's Republic of Poland was a one-carriageway small section between Łęczyca and Lisowo (15km of what is now DW142), which was built on the previous works of Nazis.

Plans At the post-war year there were very ambitious plans to make a motorway network for the whole Poland. For example, engineer Eugeniusz Buszma has published his propositions to the network in the magazine "Drogowiec" (1946, issue 1):

  1. East – West (Słubice – Warsaw – Białystok) – 680km

  2. North – South (Gdynia – Warsaw – Balkans) – 650km

  3. Silesia – Baltic I (Gdańsk – Łódź – Katowice) – 460km

  4. Pomeranian (Gdańsk – Szczecin) – 280km

  5. Silesian (Wrocław – Katowice – Kraków) – 190km

  6. Mazurian (Kaliningrad – Elbląg – Malbork) – 20km

  7. Silesia – Baltic II (Bydgoszcz – Wrocław) – 260km

  8. Łódź – Wrocław – (Prague) – 310km

  9. Katowice – (Vienna) – 60km

  10. Poznań – Szczecin – 200km

  11. Radom – Lublin – (Lviv) – 220km

In total, the mileage, according to the proposal, would total more than .

After the addition of the sections built by the Third Reich the total network length had to be approx. 3700km. In 1963 the Motorization Council at the Council of Ministers had presented the similar plan plus the motorways: Warsaw-Kraków-Zakopane, Kraków-Przemyśl, Warsaw-Bydgoszcz-Koszalin, Poznań-Koszalin i Warsaw-Terespol (approx. 1250km). Despite announcing such pompous plans, no motorway was opened in the meantime.

In the 1970s

In the 1970s the construction of the first highways started. Plans In 1972 it was planned to build:

  • the Gliwice-Kraków motorway (now A4)

  • the second carriageway of the Wrocław-Gliwice motorway (also A4)

  • the Warsaw-Katowice motorway (so-called "Gierkówka", now the S8/A1 road), in the near future

The plans were expanded in 1976 by the following sections:

In 1973 – 1976, "Gierkówka" dual carriageway from Warsaw to Katowice () was built. Originally planned as a motorway, it was in the end constructed by adding another carriageway to the existing road, hence going through many villages and crossing with local roads. The part from Piotrków Trybunalski to Częstochowa (78km) was constructed as a new route on a motorway alignment, but the crossings between the highway and other roads were constructed as one-level intersections with pedestrian crossings and no viaducts or overpasses.

In the 1980s

Near the end of the 1970s the first construction of motorways started and continued to the next decade. The roads opened in the 1980s were the first motorways and expressways meeting the contemporary highways 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 major routes planned as motorways were A1, A2 and A4, while other main routes were planned as expressways. The implementation of these plans, however, came at a very slow pace: throughout the 1980s, only an average of of highways in the whole country were being opened per year.

In the 1990s

In the III Republic of Poland, planned S3 was promoted to motorway A3 (the decision was later reversed) and a plan was introduced (also later reversed) of constructing motorway A8 Łódź – Wrocław – Bolków (now S8/A8/S5). 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.

In the 2000s

As of the beginning of 2000, the vast majority of national and international traffic routes were served by regular national roads with at-grade intersections and pedestrian crossings, most of them leading through the centres of cities, towns and villages, and most of them single carriageway. Only the following number of highways was present:

  • about of modern dual-carriageway motorways and expressways (3.5% of the network as planned nowadays),

  • about of not-resurfaced Nazi German motorways from the 1930s, over half of which with only the first carriageway constructed,

  • about of single-carriageway expressways.

Before the EU membership

At the beginning of the 21st century, the tempo of highway construction started to increase. The main focus was on the west–east motorways A4 and A2. In 2002, a long-awaited renovation of the A4 from Krzywa to Wrocław (93km) has started, which included laying new high quality surface in place of the Nazi German concrete slabs, reconstruction of all the pre-WWII bridges on the motorway and renovation of the viaducts above the motorway.

This is also the period when Poland started introducing motorway tolls, first in 2000 for the A4 section between Mysłowice and Kraków.

In European Union

1 May 2004 was a crucial day for the history of motorway construction and that is when the length of highway constructions started to increase the most. One of the major advantages of signing the European Union access document was that Poland could get access to large funds for co-financing the construction of new roads and upgrades of the existing road infrastructure. Overall, the co-financing funds amounted to about 43% of the road construction costs during the first 20 years of the EU membership.

At this time, 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. On many of them, only one carriageway was built, with the allocated space prepared for easy construction of the second carriageway later.

2011 – 2015

In the five years from 2011 to 2015, 1563 kilometers of motorways and expressways were opened – about as much as in the whole prior history of highway construction combined. 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:

2016 – 2020

After the peak of investments before Euro 2012, very few new contracts for road construction were signed in 2012 and 2013. This resulted in a small number of sections being opened in 2015 and 2016, a large share of which were the last delayed fragments originally scheduled for a Euro 2012 opening. In particular:

  • In 2016, the last delayed fragment of between Kraków and Ukraine was opened, making A4 the first major Polish highway completed on its whole length, as well as the first complete border-to-border highway connection.

  • Also in 2016, the delayed bypass of Łódź was finished, making completed on its whole route except for those sections where national road 1 had already been a dual carriageway (see In the 1970s), allowing for a significantly lower priority of constructing the remaining stretch compared to other highways.

Since 2014, the number of signed contracts has risen again, resulting in the number of road openings having risen again since 2017.The sections opened in 2016 – 2020 belonged to the following highways:

2021 – 2025

The high tempo of highway development continued in the 2020s. The main focus was on construction of new highways in the less populated eastern Poland, including the international routes Via Carpatia and Via Baltica.The sections opened in 2021 – 2025 belonged to the following highways:

2026 – present

The sections opened and planned to get opened in 2026 – 2030 belong to the following highways:

Total length of highways by year

See also

Notes

References