Ghost Viaduct. No car has driven over it for 10 years

There are roads that lead nowhere, so why not have a viaduct that hasn’t been driven on for a decade? Such an “unused” viaduct is located on the border of Ursus and Piastów, it runs over the railway tracks. Ultimately, it is to connect Witosa Street in Piastów with Orląt Lwowskich Street in the Ursus district. His story was reminded by Maciej Mazur in his program “Ranking Mazura”.

If officials are to be believed, there is a chance that the viaduct will be completed. Maybe even next year.

The WD-64 viaduct was built 10 years ago

The WD-64 viaduct was built by the General Directorate for National Roads and Motorways on the occasion of the construction of the Southern Bypass of Warsaw. The bypass was opened to drivers in 2013, but not a single car has driven over the viaduct to this day, because there are no access roads to it. Their construction was the task of the local government, we read on the TVN Warszawa website.

The matter is not simple, because the planned access roads lie in the zone of influence of the Warsaw-Katowice railway line, the Southern Bypass of Warsaw, two high-voltage lines and a high-pressure gas main. It is therefore necessary to make numerous arrangements with various institutions. In addition, access roads to the viaduct are planned to a large extent on land owned by the State Treasury and to a small extent on private land on the side of Piastów.

As the spokeswoman for the Ursus district, Agnieszka Wall, said, due to the five-year durability of the EU project, which was the construction of the Southern Bypass of Warsaw, the office could start designing access roads to the viaduct located in the POW road belt after the end of the durability of this investment, co-financed by the European Union, i.e. in 2017.

At that time, the local government took the first steps to build the road, but was stopped by PKP, which informed that until the completion of the modernization of the railway line on the Warszawa Włochy – Grodzisk Mazowiecki section and the Warszawa-Katowice railway line, the construction of access roads cannot be started. In December 2020, the Mazowieckie Voivode announced the waiver of compensation for the State Treasury, which opened the possibility of resuming preparatory work on the investment.

Then, the Warsaw Council made the appropriate decision, in February 2022, the inter-municipal agreement was signed by the president of Piastów, the Ursus district concluded a contract for design works in May 2022, and the contractual deadline for the completion of design works expired on April 27, 2023. The spokeswoman explained that “the design work was completed within the deadlines stipulated in the contract. We applied for approval of the construction design and obtaining a decision authorizing the implementation of the road investment.

The district is not giving up: the new work schedule calls for construction to be completed in 2024.

Ursus: 10 years without a viaduct

Local residents, for whom the viaduct was supposed to make life easier, approach the topic with a smile. “Today we celebrated the 10th birthday of the WD-64 viaduct – a facility that was supposed to connect Czechowice (and Piastów) with Niedźwiadek, but for a decade it failed to do so. Grounds? Finances, problems with reaching an agreement between the two local governments, apparently also a guarantee for the engineering facilities of the S2 route “- we read on the Facebook group Safe and Zielony Ursus.