At the moment, it seems that the new station in the Łódź city centre will be built by Poles and Italians together. Torpol consortium has won the tender.

For over a month, citizens of Łódź were anxious as to the future of the huge investment in the vicinity of the Łódź Fabryczna station, which was caused by complicated tender procedures and appeals of the subcontractors. On 24 May, the name of the contractor who will design and build the underground station was announced. If everything goes well, construction works could start this year.

The offers submitted by the six consortiums taking part in the tender were published on 8 April. Representatives of PKP PLK and Łódź authorities declared that the name of the selected contractor will be made public by Easter. However, it turned out that we had to wait a bit more, and live through some really emotional moments. The key delaying factor was the decision of a court to exclude Pol-Aqual and Dragos consortia from the tender after the motion submitted by the Warbud company, which was excluded at an earlier stage. The excluded consortium’s bid was most favourable. Over the last few weeks, PKP PLK has been consulting lawyers and developing possible scenarios of action. One of such scenarios involved preparation of a new tender. At the same time, the reconstruction deadline got endangered – financed from the EU resources, the investment has to be closed by the end of 2014. It meant that a contractor would have to sign the contract by 30 June in order to complete the project in 42 months.

Finally, on 24 May the name of the contractor who will rebuild the station was revealed. The winner is a consortium of the following companies: Torpol (Poznań), Astaldi (Rome), Przedsiębiorstwo Usług Technicznych INTERCOR (Zawiercie) and Przedsiębiorstwo Budowy Dróg i Mostów (Mińsk Mazowiecki). The net price of the project has been set to PLN 1.43 billion (PLN 1.76 billion gross). The Italians from Astaldi have already taken part in building fast railway between Rome and Naples, as well as underground in Rome, Genoa, Caracas and Copenhagen.

For the time being, everything lies in the hands of other tender participants who have 10 days for filing in appeals, and the National Appeal Chamber which will analyze them. If all goes well, the contract could be signed by the end of June, assuring the 42-month period for completion of the investment.

The Łódź Fabryczna station is a key element in the project of construction of the New Centre of Łódź between the following streets: Kilińskiego, Narutowicza, Kopcińskiego and Tuwima. Moving the station underground will allow to create a multimodal transportation hub for Łódź and the surrounding region. Tracks and platforms of the new station shall be placed 16.5 meters below surface. 10.5 meters above, a network of underground streets and part of bus station will be located. The ground level of the station will be covered with hotels, office buildings, shopping centres and apartments. The project includes also a system of “Park&Ride” car parks, as well as a bicycle parking space. P.O.W, Składowa and Węglowa streets will provide access to the station. What is more, tram lines in the vicinity will be reworked and a number of changing stops for municipal, regional and long-distance busses will be built on the northern side of the railway station.