Recently I had occasion to be in Katowice, Poland for a few days. Katowice is generally derided by Poles as being an ugly industrial centre with no art and very little culture. In fact one resident I spoke to startled me by coming right out and calling it “a shithole”. He qualified that immediately though, saying “but I love it!” Katowice has always been working town to be sure; the city centre mall sits on a disused coal mine and the city’s industrial heritage is everywhere to be seen.
I suspect the city’s image takes the biggest beating because of its proximity to the magnificent Krakow, just 80 or 90 kms down the motorway. That one-time capital is a city that could put far more attractive places than Katowice in the shade, and the fact that most tourists in southern Poland make straight for Krakow is likely the biggest reason Katowice is still so untroubled by the travel industry.
Like many cities in Poland, Katowice has an excellent tramway system, and it seems everywhere I went I was in close proximity to this extremely popular mode of public transport. Katowice residents take their transit for granted, yet they are all insiders to a wonderful magic trick about their trams. This trick — a product of what seems to be unconscious social agreement — transforms their trams from vehicles with the intimacy and pace of old-fashioned streetcars, carefully nosing through knots of shoppers who cross back and forth over the tracks embedded in the asphalt and pavements of the downtown streetscape, to speedy commuter LRTs as the trams pick up speed along the straight-away arterials that radiate out from the the city centre to the suburbs beyond. For these longer rush-hour trips the trams are often coupled two or three cars together.
I tried to capture some of that amazing transformation in the slide show above; my favourite images are of shoppers stepping across the tracks just meters away from a tramcar whose driver knows to slow to a crawl as she navigates the squares and pavements of the old town centre where pedestrians have the right of way.
I was lucky enough to ride the trams two or three times during my stay. The interiors were clean and graffitti-free and an automated system announced each stop.
The standard fare for a tram ride? Between two and three zloty; 65 to 90 cents.
One comment
Great photos of the trams in this city. Geneva also has a good-looking tram system. I’ve used it only in the core, where it was very convenient and efficient and seemed well used. Hotel guests receive a free transit pass for the length of their stay. An idea that I think would have a lot of appeal for visitors to Ottawa as well.