War in Ukraine

It's 1000 km and only 1 border change from here to where war is ragging in eastern Ukraine, so I've never been closer to war in my life and I am therefore interested in knowing what is going on there. The Syrian Civil War has been ragging for 3 years and degraded into a WW2 level of destruction, with months long sieges of cities and residential areas being leveled. Compared to that the Ukrainian conflict is many orders of magnitude less severe, but still, since it already includes mortar fire, cannon fire and even bombing from airplanes, it cannot be described in any way else then a war.

Now a timeline of battles of the war:

40+ rebel militants burned to death in Odessa - 2/may/2014 - Decisive Ukrainian victory - 40+ rebel militants killed

This shows how ugly things get when militants get involved in the conflict, as opposed to trained soldiers. Militants are merely local people, so they have no training and will do stupid things and get killed. A group of pro-russian militants attacked a march of pro-ukranian soccer hooligans in Odessa. The group of hooligans was much larger and repelled the attack. The pro-russians fled then to a trade union building, but the hooligans threw molotov cocktails and burned them to death. The police did nothing during the conflict.

Sources:
* http://rt.com/news/156480-odessa-fire-protesters-dead/


Checkpoint attack - 22/may/2014 - Decisive Rebel victory, 11+ ukrainian army soldiers killed

Rebels utilized a dirty tactic: Approached a checkpoint with an ukrainian vehicle pretending to be part of the army and then shot.

Source:
* http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/22/ukraine-checkpoint-attack-dead-army-rebels


Donetsk Airport Battle - 26/may/2014 - Decisive Ukrainian victory - Large numbers of separatists killed

The information that 50+ (sometimes even 100+) separatists appeared in the media, but I wanted to know how the ukrainians achieved this feat, while not loosing even a single soldier in this battle. And just like the checkpoint surprise attack, this one was also very dirty, showing that really playing dirty in wars pays off. The separatists rushed during the night to the Donetsk Airport and took it over. They had a mixed force of russian-ukrainians and chechens, and then they established a defence perimeter there, in the terminal but also in the trees around it. Well, an Airport terminal with huge glass windows and many open spaces around it is a terrible building to defend against heavy weapons, and its take over was a huge error of planning by the rebels, not to mention that it is far enough (800m) from the nearest residential area so that it can be bombed from the air at will. I suppose that the rebels didn't think that the Ukrainians would actually bomb the airport. The Ukrainian forces responded very quickly, within hours. First a Sukhoi 25 fired warning shots, and the rebels started panicking. Then a Mig-29 bombed the airport terminal, leaving it ruined. At this point the rebels panicked again and many ran.

So now here is how the body count got so high: Rebels wounded in the first bombing got into their trucks and tryed to flee to the city. Then an Ukrainian helicopter appeared and launched rockets against it. Well, that's a pretty low and honourless tactic, to fire are those fleeing the battle. It really shows that the Ukrainian government wants nothing less then to kill the rebels.

"Many of the killed Russian-backed fighters were riding together in a truck when they were struck from above by artillery or rocket-propelled grenades fired from a Ukrainian army helicopter. The truck was destroyed and flipped on its side. The truck bed contained pools of blood and bloody bandages were strewn about the area surrounding the truck, indicating that rebel fighters aboard had been previously wounded"

Best sources:
* http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/26/us-ukraine-crisis-airport-idUSBREA4P03720140526
* http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/as-many-as-45-kremlin-backed-insurgents-killed-in-heavy-fighting-on-may-26-27-349625.html

Helicopter with general shot down - 29/may/2014 - Decisive rebel - 14 army members dead

Using a Russian man-portable air defence system the rebels took down an army chopter carrying a general. At this point in time wikipedia showed the following loses for each side:

Ukrainian armed forces:

Killed: 78 servicemen; 8 activists;1–2 militants
Lost: 3 Mil Mi-24; 2 Mil Mi-8 helicopters; 1 An-30; 1 An-2 transport plane
Destroyed: 7 APCs (armored truck)
Captured:40-65 soldiers, over 1,000 police officers, 9 APCs; 12 ships

Rebels:

Killed: 108–179 militants; 44 activists
Captured: 63 militants and 25 alleged Russian spies
Destroyed: 1 captured APC (armored truck)

Sources:
* http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/10862222/14-Ukrainian-troops-killed-after-rebels-shoot-down-helicopter.html
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_pro-Russian_conflict_in_Ukraine

Luhansk bombing - 2/june/2014 - 5 dead, mostly woman

Many Sukhoi-25 from Ukraine fired more then 150 rockets and bombed targets in Luhansk. The importance is that one of the buildings hit is right in the center of the city, which shows that the Ukrainian power will not stop due to the danger of air attacks hitting civilians, it will really bomb all buildings where rebels are.

Sources:
* http://news.antiwar.com/2014/06/03/osce-confirms-luhansk-deaths-caused-by-airstrikes/
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU-IceBwR80

Aventura na transferência no aeroporto de Frankfurt

Olá,

O avião demorou pra decolar de São Paulo e chegou um pouco atrasado em Frankfurt, pousou ás 11:38 ao invés de 11:15. Eu reparei nisso, mas parecia tudo ok, o vôo seguinte pra Wrocław tinha boarding marcado pra 12:15 com decolagem ás 12:45. Eu já tinha reparado no pouco tempo de transferência, mas como nunca deu problema antes eu resolvi ignorar. Daí depois de pousar tem que esperar encaixar a sanfona e os outros sairem mas mesmo assim estava com tempo, daí eu saí e fui direto rapidinho sem enrolar nada pro gate do próximo vôo e cheguei lá 12:10 e não tinha quase ninguém, só uma fila pra falar com as mulheres lá, não tinha fila pra entrar no boarding. Não estava escrito boarding, nem chamou o avião nem nada.

Nesse momento eu fiz um terrível erro de avaliação. O costume é que com boarding escrito 12:15, daí as 12:15 eles chamam as mulheres com criança, daí depois business, e daí no final o pessoal normal e atraso é muito comum. Mas esse avião vai com onibus pra ele, não sanfona, então é mais apertado o tempo! Achei que iam me chamar no mega-fone em caso de problema ou chamar no boarding pelo menos. Mas não teve nada disso.

Pois eu estava com vontade de ir no banheiro cagar daí eu fui, pois assumi que o boarding não tinha começado ainda, e cheguei de volta as 12:20 e entrei atrás de uma pessoa (ao que parece a última?) entrando no boarding. 

Daí a terrível surpresa! A mulher falou - Oh! É aquele sr. Monteiro! O vôo já está fechado, você tem que ir no gate 13 agora - Achei que ia poder embarcar lá, mas gate 13 era só uma orientação que na verdade era pra eu ir pro Service Center trocar de passagem!

Daí entrei no service center, ficou marcado no papelzinho 12:30 entrada no service center isso depois de esperar numa fila já. Daí esperei tal e a mulher me fala que tinha 1 hora entre o pouso e o outro vôo que a culpa é minha que eu cheguei atrasado! Pois o avião pousou ás 11:38 e o outro decolava só ás 12:45 então eu tinha 1 hora pra entrar. Mas depois me dei conta do absurdo disso, pois eu cheguei a tempo sim de acordo com o cálculo dela! Mesmo que ás 12:20 o ônibus ainda estava lá, tinha ainda uma pessoa passando o bilhete pra entrar no boarding quando cheguei, só que a mulher botou outro no meu lugar e nem me chamou pelo mega-fone!!! Pois bem, daí ela falou com algum chefe lá e falou que ia fazer uma exceção de me remarcar sem pagar multa, pra outro vôo pra Wroclaw, mas só decolava ás 21h e não tinha lugar então eu só entrava se alguém faltasse =/ e se não deses nesse, só no outro dia! Perguntei se podia mudar pra um pra Katowice ou Poznan ou Krakow as 16h, ela falou que só se pagasse multa de remarcação de ticket!

Daí eu marquei o novo vôo pras 21h na lista de espera e voltei pro meu gate A52 pra ver o que estava lá e tinha uma mulher chorando, daí ela gritou um pouco com as mulheres da Lufthansa e as mulheres da Lufthansa do Gate assumiram que estavam erradas, falaram que receberam ordem de cima pra tacar o pessoal da fila de espera o máximo possível e que quem chegava mesmo que 1 minuto atrasado perdia o lugar mesmo! Se desculparam e falaram que só é assim quando está lotado como agora pois é perto do feriado de 1o de maio. Daí elas trocaram o vôo dela pra 21h (ao invés de mandar ela pro service center), e ela ficou com lugar marcado, não na lista de espera como eu! Eu perguntei um pouco e a situação dela era identica a minha! E no final ainda deram uma compensação financeira pra ela comprar algo no aeroporto e almoçar! Deram um voucher e a mulher saiu feliz.

Então eu falei que eu então também quero o voucher. Elas me mandaram pedir o Voucher pro Service Center e foram embora. No Service Center as mulheres não queriam me dar de jeito nenhum, que eu já devia estar feliz de ter outro voô sem pagar multa, que não sabem o que aconteceu no gate e não sabem quem estava lá e não tem mais ninguem lá pra perguntar e que não podem ligar pra elas (oras, mas deve estar no sistema deles o nome de quem estava lá e telefone!), daí o preto que controlava a fila foi super gente boa e falou que eu merecia sim, se a outra mulher recebeu eu tinha que receber, e que eu devia falar com o supervisor no Gate 22.. Daí fui pro Service Center no gate A22, que também não queriam me dar nada, e falei que queria ver o supervisor. Ele disse que o supervisor vai dizer a mesma coisa, daí eu falei - ok, quero ouvir a mesma coisa do supervisor! - Daí me mandaram ainda em outro service center dessa vez fora da área de embarque.

Nesse último Service Center eu expliquei a situação, dessa vez não falei que cheguei 5 minutos atrasado se não eles ficam negativos horríveis e não querem fazer nada, e só falei que queria os vouchers ou então eu queria um vôo mais cedo pra outro lugar e daí eu ia sozinho pra Wroclaw. Ele entao foi bem mais positivo falou com um supervisor (demorou um monte pra ele achar o tal supervisor!) e conseguiu um voo pra Krakow as 16h! Pois nesse ele tinha certeza que umas pessoas não iam conseguir entrar por causa de um voo atrasado chegando do mexico e outro de nao sei daonde, e que só nesse era garantido o resto tava tudo lotado! Decidi esquecer os vouchers, alias nem ia dar tempo de comer, pois preferia ir com certeza do que me arriscar no vôo das 21h.

Daí eu saí correndo pra não perder esse outro vôo. Tinha que passar de novo pelo raio X e etc. O boarding era 12:35, então cheguei ás 12:05 e o gate estava até fechado a chave, não podia entrar, esperei lá e abriu ás 12:15 e encheu de gente e fui falando com a mulher e vi que o sistema dos da espera é quem chegar primeiro e falar primeiro com a mulher consegue antes, então eu consegui como primeiro dos esperas um bilhete real ás 12:30. Daí as 12:40 chamaram as mulheres com criança, daí as 12:45 business class e só as 12:50 os normais naquela fila enorme, eu já fui entrando logo pra não dar tempo de chegar algum atrasado hihihihi Ás 12:50 ela também tacou toda a fila de espera que sobrou.

Eu já tinha notado antes que tinha muito pouco tempo entre os vôos, mas como nunca aconteceu isso não achei que agora aconteceria!

Daí eu voei pra Krakow, lá fui de onibus pro centro da cidade, o ônibus super demorado, com umas 50 paradas, tava demorando tanto que no meio do caminho eu ví um taxi e desci e resolvi ir o resto de taxi Daí fui pra Katowice de ônibus (pois trêm já não tinha nesse horário ás 19h) e dormi lá na casa dos pais da Kasia.

Que coisa né???

A minha conclusão é que as mulheres lá passaram a fila do boarding bem antes do horário certo! E jogaram pra fora do vôo quem não chegou super pontualmente até 12:15! Que absurdo, 5 minutos de atraso é motivo pra jogar fora do vôo agora? Sem nem chamar no mega fone nem nada???

To the European Union: Please save the polish railways!

Dear Siim Kallas and other members of the European Commission,

In the media I followed the persistent requests from the polish PO-led government to transfer EU-backed railway funds to the construction of highways [source], so I decided to write this open letter to defend that the European Commission should not accept this outrageous discrimination against the polish railways and should insist that EU-funded investments should be 60-40 in favor of railways. Note that outside the EU funds, Poland still invests billions and billions in roads and almost nothing in railways! So it is not 60-40 or 40-60 that we are talking about, it is more like 20-80 or 30-70 in favor of roads! And this difference can mean life or death for railways in Poland.

The long distance passenger rail in Poland has been losing passengers non-stop for the last 2 decades. It had stopped losing passengers and was showing signs of improving, but the arrival in the market of aggressive low-cost bus carriers has put it decisively in a downwards spiral again. Poland already transports less passengers in rail than Austria, which has a 4 times smaller population, and I would argue that passenger rail is only in a worse shape in Romania, considering EU countries.

The speed of passenger trains in Poland is ridiculously slow in many routes, and it cannot compete with the buses and cars going in huge and well-maintained highways. The (by far) most important long distance rail operator, PKP Intercity, has been losing passengers at an alarming rate! In the first two months of 2014 it lost 20% of it's passengers year-on-year! [source]

And what is the answer of the Polish government? Build more highways and transfer funds from rail to roads =( These extra funds could be utilized to modernize the routes between all cities with more than 200.000 inhabitants in Poland, which would then make long distance passenger rail competetive again and save it! But only if the European Commission refuses the transfer of funds this will happen!

1> The terrible state of long distance passenger rail in Poland

Here is a graphical representation of the data currently available, note that by far the most important long distance rail operator, PKP Intercity, has been losing passengers at an alarming rate! In the first two months of 2014 it lost 20% of it's passengers year-on-year, and the total amount of rail passengers remained more or less the same only because of some commuter rail and regional rail which is doing well in some regions, but for long distance the tendency is downwards:

2> The government has a transport policy which makes a joke out of the pro-rail policy of the European Union

Over the last few years this has been a constant position of the party currently in power and they have utilized again and again false, contradictory and absurd arguments to defend their position. And the matter is most pressing because the passenger rail in Poland in a decisive moment: There is still time to save it if enough funds are invested in improving the infrastructure, which is the main obstacle to the success of passenger rail in Poland, but the Polish government insists in sabotaging this by requesting the funds to be transferred to roads. This action of the current government could lead to the total collapse of rail in Poland, and therefore I decided to write this open letter showing concrete arguments for my case.

The transportation policy of the current polish government is in total disrespect of European Union priorities. The government has absolutely no interest in the rail system, and just invests the minimum necessary to obtain the maximum possible amount of cash from the EU, and invests hugh amounts of cash in an enormous Highway system which will soon be greater then that of the United Kingdom! This is done by contracting impossible amounts of debt and the government has even stole recently the pension funds to cover for this large imbalance in it's budget! All in the name of highway building...

Outside EU funds there are hugh road projects but *zero* major railway projects. The Polish government doesn't want to invest EU funds 40-60 to roads, it says so because the EU offered 60-40. If the EU had offered 40-60 to begin with, they would now want 20-80 =( That's the reality, we are dealing with cynic people.

Yellow, Red and Blue sections will be finished by 2020 in the map bellow:

Railway investments in 2014-2020:

3> The main cause for the decline in passenger rail is because the railways are so slow

The speed of passenger trains in Poland is ridiculously slow in many routes, and it cannot compete with the highways. I prepared a large comparison of rail and bus speeds in this previous post: http://felipemonteirodecarvalho.blogspot.com/2014/03/pkp-vs-polskibus-comparison.html

4> Another main problem is the rail access fee

The European Union has already forced the government to revise their fees policy, but they responded by increasing rail station fees and increasing other fees to make up, as well as by cutting a program of 500 millions per year which was utilized to repay debts of the railway company =( The PO government policy is clear: Not a cent invested in rail unless the EU forces it! [source1] [source2]

5> How to save the polish passenger rail

But not everything is lost still! If European Commission members block this attempt and insist on 60-40 for railway investment, then the downward trend could be put at a check and rail could flourish again!

The polish transport minister lies when she says that there is nothing to be done with the extra funds =(

And to prove it, I prepared a list of projects which I suggest should be implemented with the new funds =)

5.1> Opole-Gliwice should not have a cheap rehabilitation to 120km/h. It is a major EU corridor, which connects major polish cities such as Wrocław, Katowice and Kraków, and it should be Modernized to 160km/h
5.2> Gliwice-Katowice-Sosnowiec should also be modernized to 160km/h building a 3rd and 4th rail to separate long distance trains from local trains if really necessary, as this was the reason the PO government gave to give up in the modernization of this segment
5.3> Radom-Kielce-Kraków connects also very important polish cities and there are no plans to improve anything in the next 6 years in this route! By this time the buses will already have all the market. This entire route should be modernized to 160km/h still in this EU perspective
5.4> The route proposed by the government for trains connecting Wrocław and Warszawa is absurd, it goes around a large circle which has 430km while the direct line between the cities is merely 300km. The route Łódź-Kalisz-Wrocław should be revitalized to 120km/h to improve the situation in this corridor. A better modernization would normally be required, but because of the high speed rail vague plans I'd go with 120km/h instead for this route. But we should definetively not wait for the HSR since it is a vague plan which might come to reality in 50 years from now in the pace that the current government has.
5.5> Tarnobrzeg-Lublin should be modernized to 120km/h to improve the connection between Rzeszów and Lublin.
5.6> From Wrocław going to the south there are plans to modernize only half the route, which is Wrocław-Kamien. Ząb. The entire route to Kłodzko and till the Tchech Republic should be modernized instead.
5.7> The entire region of Mazuria has no real plans, and in this region the trans go as snails! A lot of work around the mazurian lakes and in all directions from Ołsztyn is required, with target speed 120km/h
5.8> The entire route from Katowice to the popular mountain vacation city of Zakopana should be revitalized to 120km/h
5.9> The entire route from Kraków to Zakopana should be revitalized to 120km/h
5.10> Kołobrzeg-Gdansk should be revitalized to 120km/h

5.11> Many other routes around Bydgoszcz should be revitalized

PKP vs PolskiBus: a comparison

Since PolskiBus is often brought up as a reason why railways are losing clients in Poland, I decided to investigate how competetive long distance trains and PolskiBus are. To do this, I used the following map to check which are the largest cities in Poland, and compared the speed and price of rail travel (TLK from PKP Intercity or InterRegio from Przewozy Regionalny) against the speed and price of PolskiBus travel.

The bus route price was calculated in the PolskiBus website, buying to the next day around 6-10 am, a common scenario. Higher than average values were skipped, but undesirables times (such as 5 am) too, obtaining usually the value most common among desirable travel times.

The rail price is just a guess from the TLK price table. In the PKP Intercity website it takes a long time to switch between routes, so I had no time to get all the real prices, but this should give an estimate. The InterRegio has smaller prices than TLK and also second, third and fourth persons in a group pay half, but on the other hand InterRegio has so many less trains than TLK that it is really a small player, and PKP Intercity is by far the largest player in Poland in long distance rail.

The bus time is from PolskiBus website and the rail time is from an average of the TLKs in the route ignoring those that are slower than average (due to going via a longer route for example).

The distance is not a direct line distance, but instead it is the road distance calculated in this website: http://www.dystans.org/ I suppose that the rail distance will be similar, but of course it is not perfect.

Route	km	Rail - Time	Rail - Price	Rail – Speed	Bus - Time	Bus - Price	Bus – Speed	Road Plans	Rail Plans	Amount
Wrocław-Katowice	180	02:50	39	63,53	02:20	16 zł	77,14	Highway A4	Halfway via 160, rest is slow and under refit to 100/120	TLK: 7 IR: 2 EIC: 2 PB: 13
Wrocław-Kraków	270	05:00	50	54	03:10	16 zł	85,26	Highway A4	Very slow section Katowice-Kraków, construction finished by 2017(?)	TLK: 5 IR: 1 PB: 20
Wrocław-Poznań	150	02:50	42	52,94	03:20	26 zł	45	Construction finished by 2020	Modernization to 160 km/h finished by 2020	TLK: 10 EIC: 2 PB: 3
Warszawa-Wrocław	360	06:10	65	58,38	05:50	36 zł	61,71	Construction finished by 2015	Slow and no plans to improve	TLK: 3 EIC: 3 PB: 15
Wrocław-Szczecin	400	06:00	65	66,67	N/A	N/A		Construction finished by 2020	Halfway modernization to 160 km/h finished by 2020	TLK: 3
Wrocław-Gdańsk	460	07:00	67	65,71	08:35	46 zł	53,59	Construction finished by 2015	Modernization to 160 km/h finished by 2015	TLK: 4 PB: 3
Wrocław-Rzeszów	450	08:50	67	50,94	06:25	26 zł	70,13	Construction finished by 2015	No plans	PB: 2
Warszawa-Lublin	170	02:20	44	72,86	04:00	24 zł	42,5	Construction finished by 2020	Halfway modernization to 160 km/h finished by 2020	PB: 5
Warszawa-Radom	100	02:20	37	42,86	01:45	19 zł	57,14	Halfway via Highway	Halfway modernization to 160 km/h finished by 2020	PB: 6
Warszawa-Kielce	180	03:30	50	51,43	02:50	36 zł	63,53	Construction finished by 2020	No plans	TLK: 1 PB: 10
Warszawa-Białystok	200	02:50	50	70,59	03:10	26 zł	63,16	Construction finished by 2020	Modernization to 160 km/h finished by 2020	TLK: 8 PB: 2
Warszawa-Olsztyn	215	02:50	50	75,88	03:10	'21 zł	67,89	Construction finished by 2020	No plans	TLK: 2 EIC: 1 PB: 4
Warszawa-Gdańsk	340	04:45	62	71,58	04:55	'48 zł	69,15	Construction finished by 2020	Modernization to 160 km/h finished by 2015	TLK: 3 EIC: 4 PB: 15
Warszawa-Katowice	290	03:35	60	80,93	04:45	36 zł	61,05	4-lane road DK1 + S8	CMK, 160km/h+	TLK p/ CMK: 1 TLK outros: 5 (4h50) InterRegio: 1 EIC: 6 PB: 4
Warszawa-Kraków	290	03:30	60	82,86	04:55	'46 zł	58,98	Construction finished by 2020	CMK, 160km/h+	TLK: 3 (+1 slow via Radom) IR: 1 EIC: 6 PB: 10
Warszawa-Poznań	300	03:10	60	94,74	04:00	'31 zł	75	Highway A2	Modernized to 160 km/h	TLK: 5 IR: 3 EIC: 6 PB: 7
Warszawa-Rzeszów	300	05:40	60	52,94	05:15	'21 zł	57,14	Construction finished by 2020	No plans	TLK: 1 PB: 5
Warszawa-Łódź	130	02:15	40	57,78	02:15	'23 zł	57,78	Highway	No plans	TLK: 14 IR: 6 PB: 19
Warszawa-Bydgodzcz	250	03:30	54	71,43	04:20	'31 zł	57,69	No plans	No plans	TLK: 8 EIC: 3 PB: 3
Szczecin-Gdańsk	370	05:00	65	74	N/A	N/A	N/A	No plans	No plans	TLK: 3
Katowice-Kraków	80	02:15	26	35,56	01:15	'16 zł	64	Highway	Modernization to 160 km/h finished by 2017(?)	TLK: 7 IR: 1 PB: 9
Katowice-Gdańsk	550	09:15	69	59,46	09:00	'51 zł	61,11	Halfway via Highway	Modernization to 160 km/h finished by 2015	TLK: 3 PB: 6
Katowice-Poznań	370	05:40	65	65,29	N/A	N/A	N/A	via Wrocław	via Wrocław	TLK: 7
Katowice-Szczecin	580	09:00	69	102,35	N/A	N/A	N/A	Construction finished by 2020	via Wrocław / Poznań	TLK: 3
Katowice-Łódź	200	04:00	50	50	03:40	'31 zł	54,55	Construction of half finished by 2020	No plans	TLK: 3 PB: 6
Poznań-Łódź	200	03:15	50	61,54	02:50	26 zł	70,59	Highway A2	No plans	TLK: 2 PB: 4
Poznań-Gdańsk	300	03:35	60	83,72	05:05	36 zł	59,02	Construction finished by 2020	No plans	TLK: 4 EIC: 1 PB: 3
Poznań-Szczecin	220	02:40	52	82,5	N/A	N/A	N/A	Construction finished by 2015	No plans	TLK: 7 IR: 2
Łódź-Gdańsk	340	05:15	62	64,76	05:15	'41 zł	64,76	Construction finished by 2015	No plans	TLK: 3 PB: 6

Conclusions

First of all I was really disappointed at the PolskiBus price. Everyone keeps saying that you can travel for 1 zł (actually 2zł) everywhere with PolskiBus, as if you don't need to think, just use it to go everywhere and it will be fast and cost 2 zł. Well, even if buying months before, I couldn't find any ticket for 2zł. The tickets were priced in average 20zł cheaper than TLK, and in a group with 2 to 4 persons it would cost the same as an InterRegio ticket. The only exception is in the A4 axis: Wrocław-Katowice-Kraków-Rzeszów. In this axis PolskiBus has really cheap tickets. I suppose that the reason is that this axis has a lot of competition from other bus companies, so PolskiBus is doing dumping to try to kill them. But many routes were neither fast no cheap, for example 51zł and 9 hours for Katowice-Gdańsk!

Second, we can see that PolskiBus wasn't faster, it the travel time with PolskiBus and TLK on average was the same, although some sections are very slow for rail and very fast for buses like the A4 axis in the south, in many other sections trains are faster because there are no highways yet there, and in some like Poznań-Warszawa, even if there are highways, the trains are still faster because the line is in a very good state.

On the other hand the PO government plans for huge highway construction and very small railway improvements in the European Unions perspective 2014-2020 will clearly give buses an advantage in the decade to come, and shows the pro-road stance of the polish government which is against the European Union policy of modal shift towards railways. Just compare the huge highway building program, which spares no expense and will drown Poland under hundreds of billions of debt with the tiny railway program:

Yellow, Red and Blue sections will be finished by 2020 in the map bellow:

Railway investments in 2014-2020:

One more thing which I concluded is that the bulk of the polish long distance rail is TLK trains, InterRegio and EIC trains serve only a fraction of the main destinations, and since TLK is dependent on a ever increasing governmental subsidy and an ever decreasing amount of passengers, it's pretty fair to say that the future of long distance rail in Poland is at the very least highly insecure. With the most popular political party (PO) being staunchly anti-rail, I'm pretty sure that service will greatly decrease in the next 10 years.

Russian-Ukrainian conflict

I don't care much about the russian/ukranian conflict, but I'd like to challenge the anti-russian consensus in the west with some different ideas to think of:

1> An interesting read about the subject can be found here: http://lastdayswatchman.blogspot.com/2014/03/putin-doesnt-threaten-our-national.html

2> Territorial integrity is saint? Well, it wasn't seen like that when the USA was bombing serbia to create Bosnia & Kosovo, was it? I fail to see why Serbia had no right to Bosnia where half the population is serbian. Kosovo is mostly albanian, but it has no history what-so-ever as an independent country, it is a completely new creation, a new muslim country in Europe. On whose best interest the on-going support for Bosnia and Kosovo is? Not on the best interest of europeans I'm sure.

3> If Obama (or any other black politician, and yes, even if he lived in a palace obtained through corruption) was deposed, well, I'm pretty sure the streets would be on fire (no, I'm not exaggerating, there are plenty of historical precedents). But somehow the Russians don't have the right to be angry that the western ukrainians deposed the russian-speaking president in Ukraine?

4> Crimea was indeed part of Russia until 1954 when the Soviet Union dictator, a Ukranian at the time, transferred it to the Ukrainian SSR. And the majority of the population is indeed Russian.

5> Sanctions against Russia? When will the EU support the right of armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh to not be ethnically cleansed by the Azeris? When will the EU grow a spine and threaten Turkey for invading and occupying Northern Cyprus, which amounts to occupying land from a member state from the European Union??? If we are pussys enough to do nothing about that, then what is the logic for threatening Russia for invading a country which is merely a possible future member? Ok, we do know the logic behind this, and the logic is: european people that resist the gay-leftist agenda (like Putin) are evil in the liberal world view.

6> The argument that next will be Poland is not a realist reading of the situation. The sphere of Russia with this conflict is decreasing, not increasing. Before Russia had influence in all of Ukraine through the pro-Russian president, now it will have dominium over Crimea, but the rest of Ukraine is now anti-Russian, so he lost territory here, he lots all of Ukraine except Crimea. That's the real reading of the situation. Russia is not expanding, it just decreased it's loss. And how can you claim that someone who is losing parts of his sphere of influence will next attack a NATO backed country for absolutely no reason at all? Poland has no russian minority, and everything that Russia could want from Poland, Stalin already took, like Lviv. Actually if poles were smart they would not be standing against Putin, but instead they would take this opportunity to retake Lviv ;) That is, if poles were interested in that in the first place. The problem of poles is wishing too much that other people have worse (like wishing Putin will get worse), instead of thinking of how themselves could improve their own power ;)

Anyway, now let me analyze the odds that Putin faces. I think that Putin will face an up-hill battle to annex Crimea, because:

a> The crimean tatars (12% of the population in Crimea) hate russians. Update: The new signs are that they will be expelled if they complain too much.

b> They haven't even taken all Ukrainian bases yet, and Ukraine is much larger and militarily powerful than Georgia. Update: From what I am reading, the full take over shouldn't take long by now, they will wait the Ukrainians to be out of food if necessary.

c> Crimea hasn't even declared independence yet Update: now Crimea seams on the fast track for independence (as a russian puppet-state).

d> Even if he wins, International recognition might take a century, see how other conflicts like the Armenian-Azeri one drag for ages without resolution.

I think that the correct position for the EU on the subject should be: Let them sort it out alone. Nothing good has ever come from western interventionism and playing the world cop. At least not since western interventionism became the war machine of the liberal ideology.

The wrong strategy: The Georgian one

Merging this topic with the Georgian-Russian conflict, I think that the war in 2008 shows what will happen to Ukraine if they attack. And that's what happens with nearly everyone which gets in a military conflict with Russia, like Napoleon, Hitler and more recently Georgia, experienced. So that's not the solution. To achieve the objective of keeping it's borders intact, a country which borders Russia needs to be clever as a fox, not pride as a lion.

Going out of the original topic a but, one strange thing is that I don't even fully understand what Russia has to win in the conflict with Georgia: why it supports so badly Abkhazia and South Ossetia? The best explanation that I read is because Abkhazians lobbied themselves as pro-russians, although this is kind of silly as they obviously are interested in nothing but themselves. But in the Ukrainian case Russia has a lot more at stake, Crimea is indeed a russian-majority area, and 30% of the population in Ukraine has russian as native language.

Abkhazia and South Ossetia do not pass the test of deserving their own country in my opinion. South Ossetia is not even economically viable, it has only 55.000 inhabitants compared to 700.000 in North Ossetia, and that the Ossetians are split among 2 countries, will that's the case for so many other ethnic groups that I can't even count. And Abkhazians were only 25% of the population in their region before they ethnically cleansed the place, and their country didn't exist for centuries, so just the fact that they killed and expelled so many georgians just makes them undeserving.

The right strategy: The Kazakh one

While the Georgian strategy shows how not to deal with Russia, the Kazakh one shows how to correctly deal with Russia. Georgia is 100% correct to wish to have its borders restored, but in my opinion they had very bad strategies to achieving this. They did not lobby themselves as pro-russians, they lost several wars against weak enemies, tried to join NATO before securing their borders (which is something not realistic and only worked to further make Russia fell threatened, and threatened bears attack!). Now look at Kazakhstan: There is a large number of russians in north kazakhstan, enough to make it a good prize for Putin, but there both countries are like the closest friends ever! The Kazakh president even supported Putin's actions in Crimea, even if they are against the interests of tatars which are related to kazakhs! [source] So that's the correct way to be a good close neighbour of Russia: Don't threaten Russia, agree with everything Putin says, and live nicely. In the long run victory will be achieved by slowly increasing control over the border regions, like the number of russians drops each year in Kazakhstan.

If Ukrainians didn't try to force their way they could have increased control over Crimea slowly over the years until such an invasion would be simply not viable in a future were most inhabitants of the peninsula would be ukrainians. On the other hand it can be claimed that this move by Russia could not have been predicted, at least I didn't think that Putin go for Crimea.

The end of passenger rail in Poland

I think we can officially announce that passenger rail in Poland lost it's position as the dominant alternative to car transportation.

A few years ago passenger rail was the dominant alternative to car transportation by far. A system which I utilized nearly exclusively for traveling all around Poland, and much beyond. I traveled from Lwów to Kraków to Warsaw to Gdańsk. I really loved this rail system, and specially traveling in the night cars. And everything so cheaply. The German real system is even better, but it is so expensive, they really eat all your euros to use the wonderful railways. In Poland I had not that much less quality for so much less money.

But nowadays, in 2014, I can see that this system has started a death spiral, and I don't find it probable that it will escape and remain a great system like passenger rail remains in Germany. Instead I think that the current course will lead the polish passenger rail into a tiny niche marker, with connections to most cities closed and pricy tickets, like in the United States.

Here are the facts:

1> The PO - Tusk - polish government is planning to cut 10% of long distance trains. [source]
2> The PO - Tusk government has set the railway and highway usage fees in such as way as to promote bus operators and destroy passenger rail. There is no logical way that passenger trains can compete in price with bus operators such as Polski Bus, because a train going from Wrocław to Katowice has to pay around 800zł in track usage fees while PolskiBus pays 16zł for using the highways. [source] The European union has already denounced this track usage fees as being unacceptable, as they are the highest in Europe, and they are destroying the polish railways and the European Union forced the polish government to reduce the track usage fees. The PO - Tusk government then complied, but they at the same time increased the rail station usage fee, so as to effectively keep almost the same price for passenger rail. Only for cargo operators the fee decreased significantly.
3> Every single zł invested by the PO - Tusk government in rail is because they are forced to do so in order to receive the European Union non-refundable funds. Tusk already tried at least 5 times to convince the EU to stop giving rail investment money to Poland, he wanted to transfer the money to road projects, but the EU refused again and again and again. [source 1] [source 2]
4> The PKP Intercity plans for the future are absurd, focused in the extremely expensive Pendolinos, bought with debt which will make the company bleed money to pay the interest rate. The Pendolinos will travel from 120 to 240 km/h, so nothing special, and will have very expensive tickets, which means that most people will not use them, but instead will use buses. PKP Intercity has no strategy for international, long distance and night trains in general, except waiting for them to die.
5> The other concurring company, Przewozy Regionalny, is in it's own death spiral. It has huge debts due to huge track usage fees and it's owners (the polish states) are constantly fighting with one another which assures that the company will never receive investment. So it has no future and is destined to die.
6> Private operators will only take the most popular routes like Katowice-Warsaw and Poznan-Warsaw and never run in the rest of the country.

My conclusions of this are:

1> The current polish government hates passenger rail and will do everything possible to destroy the polish passenger rail.
2> There is no turn back and there is no point in fighting against it (it would just be a waste of my time and my energy). It's the policy of the current government, and I don't see they going out any time soon. PiS might have good poll numbers, but I don't believe they will come to power, I bet that the liberal media will make a huge defamation campaign as always and save the liberal government. So this makes sure that there will be no policy change here, and the course will be kept steady in killing passenger rail.
3> I won't migrate to buses, as I hate buses, they have no leg space, they shake a lot (which sickens me if I try to work in a bus, but in a train I can work for hours). In general buses are an uncomfortable crappy 3rd world transport system. I think that the only way to move around Poland with comfort will be in a car from now on.

Now a comparison of the costs of bus and rail running:

Costs of a bus operator in Poland:

1> First the investment cost is 1,7 million zlotes for each new PolskiBus bus [source]
2> It burns 25L per 100 km, so 80 zl in fuel per 100 km
3> They pay their drivers a minimum wage, which costs for the employer around 2.000 zl per month (1600zl per month brutto + ZUS surcharges), which means 2000/160 => something like 15 zlotes per driving hour after counting some hours more due to stay in bus station, traffic jam, etc.
4> Krakow-Katowice costs 30 zl for one way
5> Two kinds of bus: Altano with 70 sitting places and Astromega with 2 floors and 90 sitting places.
6> Around 25zl per each parking in a bus station

Comparison of Kraków-Katowice:

A rail operator will have to pay around 400zl only for rail access + at least 300zl for energy + 100zl for personal + 200zl for railway station fees: Total cost of 1000zl which it needs to cover from tickets. If the tickets cost 10zl each, it will need at least 100 passengers to cover operational costs.

A bus operator will pay 30zl highway+80zl fuel+15zl for driver+50zl for bus station =170zl. If he fills 50 places, he can sell at 4zl each and still make an operational profit.

Comparison of Katowice-Wroclaw:

A rail operator will have to pay around 800zl only for rail access + at least 600zl for energy + 200zl for personal + 200zl for railway station fees: Total cost of 1700zl which it needs to cover from tickets. If the tickets cost 20zl each, it will need at least 85 passengers to cover operational costs.

A bus operator will pay 30zl highway+160zl fuel+30zl for driver+50zl for bus station =270zl. If he fills 50 places, he can sell at 6zl each and still make an operational profit. But he also has to pay for the bus debt, for administration, for insurance, etc.

Conclusion part 2> The railway access fees in Poland are ridiculously high, they are 10 times higher than in Spain, while the Highway access fees are very cheap for buses, so passenger trains cannot possibly be competitive and this is a deliberate Tusk policy to destroy the rail transport system. Even the European Union recognized that and already tried to force PLK to decrease its fees, but it responded by increasing train station fees.

Dumping bus prices

Even with my calculations above, and they more like guessing as I don't know the real costs involved, I am left thinking that the scotish billionair owner of PolskiBus and other companies are doing Dumping, as his prices are way bellow anywhere else in the world. In Spain to go 150km by bus will cost you at least 10 euros, but Katowice-Kraków is 6zł o.O

In Brazil the bus Piracicaba-Sao Paulo (165km) costs 40 reais, which is 55 zł only 1 way and there are no promotions at all.

In England I searched for London-Liverpool (300km) and the cheapest is 15 pounds (75zł). There is no free lunch, unlike in Poland, while PolskiBus does Wrocław-Kraków (270km) for 16zł regularly, buying in the same day.

Rail Usage Statistics

We will be able to watch if my conclusions are correct in the official European Union statistics in the next hears, here is the website: http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do?dataset=rail_pa_total&lang=en

Here is a graphical representation of the data currently available there:

It is hard to see Poland when compared to Germany, UK, France and Spain, so here is another chart which zooms into the countries with less ridership:

Well, looking at the chart I guess it could be worse (like Romania). But the fall in long distance passengers is real, PKP Intercity lost 16% of it's passengers in 2013 [source], what kept the numbers not that bad for Poland was regional rail, which is growing specially around Warsaw.

It is also interesting to keep in mind the list of 58 projects for 2014-2020 the new European Union investment perspective: http://www.rynek-kolejowy.pl/49166/58_projektow_na_przyszla_perspektywe.htm and also here a copy of the official document which seams to have been taken offline: http://media.wix.com/ugd/0a3577_20398b09eea346b1add942b5b6e9dca7.pdf

Which is really tiny in comparison with the huge highway building program in Poland, and such politic will give road transport a key advantage in the next decade:

O Tesouro Direto está cada vez melhor com a subida dos juros

E está cada vez melhor a situação no Brasil pra quem investe no tesouro direto. A única questão é quando é que vai ser o melhor momento para comprar? Difícil saber, pois quanto mais os juros sobem, melhor fica e quem comprar agora pode perder a oportunidade de comprar mais barato ainda no futuro ... mas por outro lado se a situação reverter pode perder essa oportunidade. Eu acho que vale a pena esperar o aumento dos juros em 15-16 de janeiro na reunião do Copom. Se eles aumentaram em 0,5% os juros eu acho que a NTN-B pode chegar a até 14%!

Fonte: http://www3.tesouro.gov.br/tesouro_direto/consulta_titulos_novosite/consultatitulos.asp