TBM Kinga Starts Boring 3,875-Meter Polish Railway Tunnel
A 600-ton boring machine named Kinga has begun cutting the longest railway tunnel in Poland, a 3,875-meter subterranean bore along the Szczyrzyc-Tymbark route, according to geekweek.interia.pl. The project forms part of the Podłęże-Piekiełko initiative, an infrastructure undertaking designed with a szacunkowa wartość ok. 14 mld zł to reshape transit across Lesser Poland.
Progress and Technical Specs on the Szczyrzyc-Tymbark Route
Operators launched the TBM Kinga on Saturday, October 17, after transporting the disassembled machine from a prior excavation site beneath Pisarzowa, geekweek.interia.pl reported. Mateusz Mikołajczyk, a construction manager with Budimex, stated that moving the massive rig required over one hundred deliveries, including more than thirty oversized transports that moved mostly at night to limit traffic disruptions. Workers inspected hydraulic and electrical systems and replaced cutting-wheel components to match local geological conditions. According to TVP Kraków, PKP Polskie Linie Kolejowe board member Marcin Mochocki announced during an on-site briefing that the machine has already drilled more than 100 meters of the evacuation tunnel, maintaining a pace that should see the bore completed next year.
Parallel Work by TBM Jadwiga and the 20-Tunnel Plan
While Kinga handles the narrower evacuation passage, a second, larger boring machine named Jadwiga is currently being assembled near the site to excavate the primary railway tunnel. Radio Kraków noted that Jadwiga measures nearly 11 meters in diameter, though its initial assignment on this contract involves a nearly 1.1-kilometer stretch. Jadwiga is scheduled to begin drilling in December. In total, the Podłęże-Piekiełko program requires twenty tunnels exceeding 31 kilometers in combined length to traverse the difficult terrain of the region.
Financial Scale and Completion Timeline for Lesser Poland Transit
PKP Polskie Linie Kolejowe reports that the value of completed construction work under the Podłęże-Piekiełko project reaches approximately 1,5 mld zł, while signed contracts exceed 8 mld zł. Two final tenders announced this year carry an estimated value of about 4,5 mld zł, with Mochocki projecting that authorities will secure a complete set of construction agreements for the entire route by the first half of 2027. Substantial funding for the overall 58-kilometer new route and 75-kilometer modernized connection between Chabówka and Nowy Sącz draws from the European Union’s Recovery and Resilience Facility via Poland’s National Recovery Plan, supplemented by the state budget. The entire undertaking is scheduled to open to passengers at the turn of 2030 and 2031, cutting travel times from Kraków to Nowy Sącz to roughly one hour and to Zakopane to about 90 minutes.
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