After ten years, Prague has a new tram line, the construction of another will start in a week
Tram line number 19 will return to the streets of Prague on Saturday after years. It will go to the Pankrác stop along a quarter-kilometer long line, which the city ceremonially opened on Friday. The track is a harbinger of the long-term closure of the subway station of the same name, which is planned in the coming years due to the construction of a new line D and a transfer station.
“We are opening a new tram line – this hasn’t happened in Prague for ten years. From the Prague Uprising tram stop, after almost fifty years, we will reach the Pankrác metro station along the tram tracks. We are correcting the mistakes from the 70s of the last century, when tram lines were canceled in Prague with the fact that they will not be needed. Today we already know that this is of course not true,” says the mayor’s deputy for transport Adam Scheinherr (Prague to Self).
He alludes to the fact that trams once ran through these places, from Pankrác they continued to Kačerov or Ryšánka. However, due to the construction of the highway, the track was first relocated in 1970 and then abandoned four years later with the opening of the first subway line. For the next decades, the disused railway yards were used as parking lots. It was only last year that the city started with the restoration along with the reconstruction of the entire section from Nuslí to Pankráci.
“In addition to the fact that we reconstructed almost 2.5 kilometers of the tram line in two stages, replaced almost 9.5 kilometers of rails and built new stops, after ten years we also built a new tram line in Prague and from Saturday morning we will start “Regular operation of line 19, which we are renewing after nine years. I see it as a symbolic beginning of the period of repeated development of tram transport in Prague,” says the general director of the transport company, Petr Witowski.
The new line 19 will connect Lehovec, Palmovka, Žižkov, Strašnice, Vršovice, Nusle and Pankrác, i.e. parts of the city that do not yet have a direct connection. It will be exceptional in that only two-way low-floor trams will run on it – there is no classic loop at the new terminus at Pankrác. With the introduction of the new line, too will change the route lines 5, 13, 16, 24 and bus 193.
Prague last extended the tram network in 2011 by a short section to Podbaba. But now he has big plans. In April of this year, the construction of the new Zahradní Město loop near the emerging railway station began, in a week the company will begin construction of the line from Sídliště Barrandov to Holyně, and this year it also wants to kick off for the first time between Modřany and Libuší. The track on Wenceslas Square, from Divoká Šárka to the Dědina estate or the new Dvorecký bridge over the Vltava River is in an advanced stage of preparation.
Strategy for the development of tram lines in Prague until 2030 | Photo: DPP