Express trains will now be able to travel from Prague to České Budějovice in an hour and 40 minutes
Update: 09/12/2022 11:54
Issued by: 09/12/2022, 11:54
České Budějovice – Express trains will be able to travel from Prague to České Budějovice in one hour and 40 minutes from Sunday, when the new timetable comes into effect. It will take 59 minutes from Prague to Tábor. The journey will thus be about 20 minutes faster. These are record times in the history of local railway transport, according to the press release of Czech Railways (ČD). The speed will be almost 100 km per hour. Travel to Milevsko, Bechyně or Jindřichova Hradec will also be speeded up, i.e. to other stops on the 4th railway corridor and beyond.
“The train journey between Prague and the South Bohemian metropolis will be approximately 20 minutes shorter than in the outgoing timetable. However, compared to the 1980s, the journey time has even been cut in half. Back then, it took approximately three and a half hours to travel from Prague to České Budějovice. New travel times so take advantage of the more convenient daily commute to work or to school on the route České Budějovice – Tábor – Prague and back,” said Jiří Ješeta, a member of the board of directors of ČD and náměstí for personal transport.
For all EuroCity and InterCity connections, he unified the national transport speed to 160 maximum kilometers per hour. The trains will have a dining car, Wi-Fi or sockets for recharging travel electronics. The Ex 7 South Express line will be one of the fastest in the Czech Republic and, according to ČD, compete with traffic on roads where queues often form. The average traveling speed of the trains reaches 98 kilometers per hour. Between Prague and Tábor, it will exceed 100 kilometers per hour. “The journey by train will thus be faster than by car. In addition, people will avoid frequent queues on the I/3 road and the D1 highway and parking problems in the agglomerations where the trains stop,” said ČD spokesman Petr Šťáhlavský.
In the future, according to the national carrier, the journey will be even shorter, thanks to the modernization of the remaining sections of the 4th railway corridor. The journey from Prague to Budějovice will take about an hour and a half.
On Corridor 4, the Railway Administration put two sections into operation this year. At the turn of June and July, trains started running on the reconstructed line between Votice and Sudoměřice, and from September on the Soběslav – Doubí section. This reduced the driving time. In the future, speeds of up to 200 kilometers per hour will be possible on the track. But first, the state must buy new trains that can handle it, the railway workers said.