Trams and buses in Prague have a new voice. The stops will be narrated by Jan Vondráček
The new public transport voice was presented to journalists on Thursday by the mayor’s deputy Adam Scheinherr (Praha Sobě) and representatives of the DPP and the Ropid organization, which plans Prague’s public transport. For trams and buses in the PID, 7,793 operational recordings of the type of route change or tariff band are needed and another 13,042 with the names of stops, of which 3,562 are in the territory of Prague, the rest in Central Bohemia. In public transport, the names of stops were not reported until the 1950s.
Vondráček exaggeratedly said that he felt like after the presidential election. “Just like me, I didn’t have to go around the republic in a caravan. I want to thank everyone who voted for me and for the opportunity I was given. Those who didn’t vote for me, but they shouldn’t shut up, I’ll try to be a good voice for everyone,” he said. He subsequently compared his new role to the humanization of machines. “The machine (bus and tram) has two human aspects, the driver and then it’s the voice that says which station it has arrived at,” he added.
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The company will sign with Vondráček next week, and in August the actor will start recording the first recordings, both station names and operational announcements. It will then appear in the trams in autumn. By the end of this year, Vondráček will be wooing bus stops, which will then appear next year.
Selections from four recordings
The new voice for urban transport was chosen by passengers from four recordings. The four voices could be heard directly in the buses and trams. The pre-selection was made by a jury, which included not only representatives of the DPP and the municipality, but also experts, such as a phonetician. 200,013 people voted in the poll. Vondráček received 124,316 votes.
Originally, there was no station announcement in MHD at all. The first attempts began only in the 1950s, when the driver reported them into the microphone. “The first major turning point was in 1974, when we opened the first metro line and where the first train radios were deployed,” said DPP transport director Ladislav Urbanek. The first players then appeared in trams in 1987. A year later, DPP started the first experiments with digital annunciators, in 1995 the first one was fully introduced in the metro. They appeared in buses and trams in 1996.
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For the last quarter of a century, Dagmar Hozdrová has been the voice of buses and trams, who has been recording traffic announcements and stop names of the Prague public transport since 1996. Passengers could also hear her voice in other cities. But she decided to stop recording some time ago. This March, she became an honorary citizen of Prague.
Each of the three lines of the Prague metro has its own voice. On line A, Světlana Lavičková announces station names and other instructions, on line B, the voice of the late Eva Jurinová is heard, on line C, Tomáš Černý speaks. This year, the transport company started the construction of the new line D, which is to lead from Pankrác to Písnice.