There is no need to remind anyone that traffic on the A4 motorway is steadily increasing and that, in fact, hardly a day goes by without an accident or collision there. General Directorate for National Roads and Motorways has announced a tender to select a company that will develop options for addressing the problem of the increasingly congested Krzyżowa–Wrocław section.
At least three solution options will be analysed:
Option 1 – Expansion of the existing A4 motorway as follows: construction of one carriageway (3 traffic lanes + hard shoulder) parallel to the existing A4, following the earlier reconstruction of interchanges and construction of new engineering structures; then traffic would be transferred to the newly built carriageway, the old surface demolished, and the second carriageway constructed (3 traffic lanes + hard shoulder);
Option 2 – construction of the A4 in a new corridor running south from, for example, the Wrocław Wschód interchange to an interchange with the existing A4, for example near Legnica (taking the S3 under construction into account), and expansion of the A4 along its existing route on the Legnica–Krzyżowa section (in accordance with Option 1). Along the existing A4 route, over the length of the section that would be replaced by the new alignment, the demolition of engineering structures and construction of at-grade intersections would be analysed;
Option 3 – construction of the A4 in a new corridor running south from, for example, the Wrocław Wschód interchange to the Krzyżowa interchange, while along the existing A4 route the demolition of engineering structures and construction of at-grade intersections would be analysed.
There are many questions. For example, would modernising the existing motorway, demolishing structures and constructing new ones (interchanges, overpasses and so on) not be more costly than building an entirely new road? And is construction of a new A4 even possible given environmental requirements (protected animal habitats, among other things)?