Roads and expressways in Poland

Highways in Poland are public roads which are grouped into four categories related to the republic's administrative division. Motorways and expressways are part of the national road network. Voivodeship roads are provincial-level roads administered by the individual governments of the voivodeships. Powiat and gmina roads are administered by county and municipal authorities, and do not have any separate road signs for them. Poland has 412,264 km (256,169 mi) of public roads, of which 131,863 km (81,936 mi) are unsurfaced (2011):

As of 10 January 2016, there are 3,274.67 km (2,034.79 mi) of motorways (autostrady, singular - autostrada) and expressways (drogi ekspresowe, singular - droga ekspresowa) in use.

The law of 21 March 1985 law about the public roads, with later amendments, defines the motorways and expressways as follows:

The parameters of these roads are determined by the Ordinance of the Minister of Transport and Maritime Economy of 2 March 1999 - on technical parameters to be met by public roads and their location. Expressways are different from motorways mainly in that they:

Other parameters of the roads:

Notes: 1 – only inside or near borders of a big city

At the moment cars are free of payment while driving on expressways, however A1, A2 and A4 are planned as tolled(some parts are already such). The payments from motorways are coming to the National Roads Fund.

The National Roads Fund pays out money, if the amount of income received by the private concessor is less than was expected by the agreement between the government and the concessor. For example, in 2012 33 million PLN was allocated to private companies because of that.

There are two systems to collect money:

Open system is more popular among the private concessors, where money is paid only in the toll booths put across the roads. There different amount of money is paid according to the type of the vehicle. It is relatively cheap, but it forces drivers to stop at each toll booth, and so lowers the capacity of the motorway. For example, in the Greater Poland part of A2 the distance between booths is approx. 50 km.

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Wikipedia