The first decommissioned trams are heading from Prague to Kharkiv, Ukraine, and buses will join them
Loading the tram before going to the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. Photo: Daniel Šabík / DPP
The Prague Transport Company (DPP) loaded the first four decommissioned trams onto trucks today, which it is donating to the war-torn city of Kharkiv in Ukraine. The journey takes approximately two days. In total, Prague is donating twenty trams and two buses to Ukraine, which will travel to the city of Khmelnytskyi. The representatives of the capital city and DPP informed about it.
DPP donates five T3SUCS type trams, 15 T6A5 type trams, which ceased operation in June last year, one Karosa B951 bus and one articulated Irisbus Citelis 18M to the Kharkiv city transport company.
The donated T6A5 tram type was produced in the second half of the nineties by the ČKD Tatra company in Prague as a successor to the Tatra T3 trams. It has not been in Prague since last year, but it continues to serve, for example, in Brno, Ostrava, Bratislava, Košice. In Ukraine, it has been running since 2016 in Kharkiv and Kyiv.
“Several Ukrainian cities contacted us and here supply and demand met and we were able to accommodate the city of Kharkiv, where similar types of trams are actually used and can repair and modify them,” said Prague Mayor Zdeněk Hřib (Pirates).
The trams will have to be modified for Ukrainian traffic. The wheel track will be changed, because in Ukraine it is used wider than in Prague. A check-in system will also have to be installed, i.e. ticket machines or information signs that they use in Kharkiv.
According to the DPP, they are ready for adjustments in this Ukrainian city. The organization People in Need takes care of the transport. The next part of the trams will be loaded in about ten days, and all should be taken away by the end of this year.
“T3SUCS and T6A5 trams are well known to our partners in Ukraine, because in previous years we sold cars of these types included here. They then served well and are still used in public transport somewhere, for example in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Mariupol and other cities. At the beginning of the wars, the Russian aggressors destroyed a number of trams in Kharkiv, Mariupol and other cities, including ours originally,” said DPP Director General Petr Witowski.