“The Pendolino effect”: Alstom’s high-speed train rides the wave of the Polish rail revolution
“The Pendolino effect”: Alstom’s high-speed train rides the wave of the Polish rail revolution
Ten years after its introduction, the Pendolino high-speed train has become the mainstay of Polish high-speed rail, transforming the image of rail travel in the country and paving the way for further high-speed development in both Poland and neighbouring countries.
As part of Alstom's innovative Avelia high-speed family, the legacy of Pendolino continues to thrive under its rebranded name, Avelia Stream. This evolution reflects Alstom's commitment to enhancing its high-speed offerings while maintaining the strong reputation Pendolino has built in Poland.
Artur Fryczkowski, Alstom’s Commercial Director for Poland, Ukraine, and the Baltics, is also the Vice President of Alstom in Poland. He has been with the company for over 13 years, and his journey started with Poland’s first high-speed rail project of Pendolino. Before joining Alstom, he spent 10 years in the rail industry, working on the operator side with DB Cargo.
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The introduction of the Pendolino train over a decade ago transformed public perception of high-speed rail in Poland, could you elaborate on this?
Pendolino entered commercial service in 2014 and, before that, the country had a large fleet of older EN57 trains, which were not super comfortable for passengers, with, for example, the heating either burning their feet in compartments or non-existent in the toilets. When Pendolino was introduced, with its sleek design, high speed and top-notch catering services, it was an immediate success. They were buying tickets to cities and returning straight away, just to experience the train. Lots of people came to visit the depot to see how the trains were maintained. The main aspects that people appreciated were the quietness in the compartments and, of course, the speed: the train is designed to operate up to 250 km per hour. Warsaw to Gdansk or Silesia in two and a half hours – hard to beat by car!
How have passenger numbers evolved since Pendolino’s launch?
Polish Railways was struggling to maintain passenger numbers, affected by the poor customer experience on the old trains. Intercity passenger numbers were around 49 million per year before Pendolino was introduced whereas last year they rose to 78 million, despite a dip during the COVID years. The target for 2030 is 110 million. All this is down to the ‘Pendolino effect’! People don’t need to use their cars; they can travel safely, by train. They can work, eat and sit in comfort. For the younger generation, taking the train has become second nature compared to driving.
What was the strategy behind building the Pendolino maintenance function from scratch? How has it matured over time and influenced maintenance practice in general in Poland?
Our contract with PKP was in three parts: delivery of the trains, building the depot and 17 years of full services, including cleaning the trains. The Pendolino depot in Warsaw was built from scratch because there wasn’t a facility in Poland to cater to high-speed trains. PKP (Polish Rail) is the owner of the fleet and the depot. Alstom built the depot, based on a similar Pendolino facility in Italy, within PKP’s site. Alstom has high standards of safety, and this had a positive influence on our customer. We saw Alstom safety practices spreading to other areas at the site and other parts of the network. Now many of these practices are incorporated in the specifications of tenders, so not only has Alstom safety culture influenced the customer, but also future suppliers. The way Alstom fulfilled the delivery and service contracts has established a model of operation for PKP.
What has led to Pendolino’s high availability and reliability rates?
In a nutshell, it is down to organisation and tools. Firstly, we organise fleet management for the customer. We provide the trains for the morning run and this allows us to stagger the kilometres each train has run, which affects the maintenance schedule. You cannot have a situation where you take out half the fleet for maintenance because the trains have all run for the same number of kilometres. We manage the milage of each train to be optimised for maintenance regimes, so each train has a different mileage and can be taken out of service at different times.
Secondly, we have a range of digital tools for condition-based and predictive maintenance to support our service activities. For example, at our Warsaw site, we have TrainScanner™, Alstom's smart data acquisition solution, which uses cameras and infrared scanners to check the trains as they enter the depot, and creates data on all the components so that we know the optimum time to change, for example, the clippers on the wheelset brakes. It used to be a manual inspection, but the machine sees more than people and the data reliability is very high.
The data collected by the TrainScanner is analysed in our HealthHub™ solution. This precise data on the actual condition of each train, combined with the historic and current data from the Alstom fleet, means we can optimise our maintenance processes and planning. Availability now, after 10 years of service, is an incredible 97% and even though we carry out increasingly stringent tests, reliability is 99%, which is the highest ever reliability rate in Poland.
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2014Pendolino entered commercial service in 2014
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250The train is designed to operate up to 250 km per hour
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99%Reliability rate is 99%, the highest ever reliability rate in Poland.
What are the key infrastructure investments planned to expand high-speed rail capacity in Poland?
Poland has a huge national program called CPK (Centralny Port Komunikacyjny) for a central communication port in the middle of Poland, 40 km from Warsaw. It will connect a dozen major cities with a large airport designed to accommodate 40 million passengers a year with operations scheduled to begin in 2032. In addition, hundreds of kilometres of new or upgraded high-speed rail connections, buses and new highways will be developed alongside this programme.
There are also plans to upgrade international services, with Rail Baltica, which is connected at the western end to Warsaw and currently progressing at different paces in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. By 2035, the rail network in Poland and Europe will be very different, with the main development in central and eastern Europe, rather than western Europe which is already well connected by rail links. There is also a move, also addressed by Alstom continuous product development, to interlink Europe, with multi-system trains that can handle different gauges and signalling systems, and allow trains to cross more international borders.
The next generation of single-deck high-speed trains, known as Avelia Stream, build on the proven success of Pendolino and represents the future of high-speed trains in Europe. Avelia Stream offers optimal total cost of ownership, savings on lifecycle costs, and unparalleled passenger comfort. Designed for operations at 200–300 km/h with high modularity and flexibility, it is fully adaptable to meet every customer’s specific needs.
