DPP put out a tender for the contractor of the trolleybus line at Václav Havel Airport Prague, construction will start this year
1/11/2022
Prague, November 1, 2022 – The infrastructure for the trolleybus line between Veleslavín Station and Václav Havel Airport Prague will be built by Elektrizace železnik Praha for 354.5 million crowns. Transport company hl. m of Prague (DPP) tendered it in a public contract within the project of electrification of bus line No. 119. Construction will last 15 months, DPP plans to start it this year at the end of November.
In the case of the electrification project of bus line No. 119, the traction trolley line will cover roughly 50% of its existing route, the trolleybuses will run in battery mode on the remaining section. The trolley line will start at the existing Nádraží Veleslavín bus terminal, along Vodená Street and K Letišti Street, where it will end before the roundabout at Terminal 3. In the opposite direction to the center, the trolleybuses will connect to the traction line at the Terminal 3 stop. The traction line will continue uninterrupted continue to the final stop at the bus terminal Nádraží Veleslavín. The DPP will thus build a total of 11.6 kilometers of overhead line, as well as charging points in the Václav Havel Prague Airport bus interchange and in the Řepy garage, which will be home to trolleybuses on this line.
In addition to the construction of traction masts, catenary lines and the laying of a cable route, three new trolleybus interchanges were also built as part of the construction of this project: in the DPP Řepy garage and two container ones – at Nádraží Veleslavín and at the bus interchange at Václav Havel Airport Prague. Part of the catenary line will also be powered from the new Dědiny transformer station, which DPP is building together with the new Divoká Šárka – Dědinská tram line. DPP will equip it with the appropriate technology so that it can simultaneously serve trams and trolleybuses.
The electrification of bus line No. 119 is also included in the international research project E-BRT, which is being prepared as part of the European scientific research program Horizon and coordinated by the International Union of Public Transport UITP. In addition to the presentation and comparison of operational and technological parameters of large-capacity battery trolleybuses, the energy management of operation and charging and the possibilities of its optimization will be monitored.
“Two weeks ago, DPP and I put the new trolleybus line Letňany – Čakovice into trial operation. In less than a month, we will start the construction of the second one, from Nádraží Veleslavín to Václav Havel Airport Prague. This is good news both for travelers to and from Václav Havel Airport Prague, as well as for local citizens. Thanks to this project and the deployment of large-capacity three-cell battery trolleybuses, we will significantly increase the transport capacity of public transport, improve the passenger experience and contribute to the reduction of exhaust gas emissions and noise in the area. In addition, we are coordinating the electrification project of bus line No. 119 with other investments. In the Dědinská tram loop, the trolleybus will have a common switchyard with the tram line, which we are building here with the DPP, and we are also preparing for the future construction of the infrastructure for electrification line No. 191. In addition, we have prepared and approved electrification projects for 12 other city bus lines, in cooperation with The Central Bohemian region and the first suburban ones and their conversion to trolleybuses. After the completion of all planned projects, Prague and DPP will become the largest operator of trolleybuses in the Czech Republic. This is the real return of trolleybuses to Prague,” he says Adam Scheinherr, deputy mayor m of Prague for the area of transport and chairman of the DPP supervisory board.
“By tendering the contractor and signing the contract with him, we have come significantly closer to the start of infrastructure construction for the second Prague trolleybus line. We plan to start it by the end of November this year at the latest with the construction of a new transformer in our garage in Řepy. We closely coordinate the two important projects that we are implementing in Prague 6 – the electrification of bus line No. 119 and the construction of the new tram line Divoká Šárka – Dědinská. Both projects should be completed and operational around the same time. The construction of the infrastructure for the trolleybus line to Václav Havel Prague Airport should not take more than 15 months. I strongly believe that the first passengers could ride in the test run at the end of the first quarter of 2024,” supplies Petr Witowski, Chairman of the Board and CEO of DPP.
“I am extremely pleased that DPP managed to prepare the electrification project of bus lines No. 119 in an extremely short time, including the procurement of vehicles. Council of the head m of Prague approved it in the second half of September 2019, and after three years of our intensive work on design preparation, we can start building. For this, many thanks go to all colleagues at the DPP, who are suitable for the preparation of this project,” he says Jan Šurovský, member of the board of directors and technical director of DPP – Surface.
DPP will deploy new high-capacity three-cell battery trolleybuses with the working trade name Škoda-Solaris 24m on the trolleybus line between Veleslavín Railway Station and Václav Havel Airport Prague. DPP outbid their supplier in February this year. In total, DPP will purchase 20 vehicles of this type. The first should appear in Prague at the end of next year. Given that it is a new type that is not yet in use anywhere in the Czech Republic, the supplier will first have to drive this vehicle 10,000 kilometers without passengers and then 20,000 as part of a test run with passengers, before it is homologated for normal operation. “I assume that part of the test runs of the vehicle can also be on the first trolleybus line between Palmová and Čakovice if this product is needed,” concludes Jan Barchánek, head of the DPP Bus Operation unit.
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