České dráhy to Offer Hundreds of Extra Seats on Its Trains at the Beginning of the Summer Holidays

As every year, České dráhy is going to increase the capacity of its train services at the end of the school year and the beginning of the summer holidays again. Most of the extra carriages will be deployed on Friday 28 June and Saturday 29 June.  A number of train services have been running with increased capacity since at least the beginning of the month of June and more carriages will run on them throughout the summer holidays. The carrier recommends passengers to make early reservations for seats on long-distance trains, ad to use regional trains for shorter journeys (especially in the Prague surroundings) during the peak hours on Friday and Saturday, and in the case of travelling without reservations it is highly recommended to follow the “occupancy signalling” light colour informing about the expected occupancy of trains and to use freer trains outside the expected peak hours, for example on Sunday.  

České dráhy is already counting on increased demand at the beginning of the holiday season in its valid timetable and in the planned train configuration for the upcoming days. Selected lines have been operated with an increased capacity due to higher demand for travelling since at least the beginning of June. For example, more boosting carriages are being arranged for on such services as Southern Express, Vltava and Lužnice from Prague to Southern Bohemia. The Berliner service from Prague to the north of Bohemia and further to Germany, the busiest Bavarian Express trains between Prague and Plzeň or the Western Express trains from Prague to Cheb and the Berounka fast trains from Prague to Klatovy have an extra carriage as well.

In addition to the planned boosting carriages, České dráhy has prepared additional standby carriages available to the train traffic control centres, which can supplement the capacity of trains departing from Prague by several hundred additional seats in total. These carriages are most often used on connections to Moravia, e.g. to Ostrava or on the Valašský and Slovácký Express trains.  

Since the end of the school year falls on a Friday this year, it is possible to expect that the actual traffic peak hours will be relatively short and concentrated especially on Friday afternoon and Saturday. České dráhy therefore recommends that all passengers planning to travel at this time should make their seat reservations in time. It is also possible to obtain a seat reservation free of charge under certain conditions. If people intend to travel over shorter distances, they should prefer the use of regional train services. This applies especially to journeys from Prague to Kolín, Benešov u Prahy or Beroun, for example. Regional services run frequently on these railway lines, the journey times are not much longer than those on fast trains, but on the last day of the school year and at the beginning of the holidays they can be expected to be freer than long-distance fast trains to Moravia or to the southern and western districts of the country.    

Passengers are also advised to keep an eye on the “occupancy signalling” light colour, which indicates the expected occupancy of a train service in the case of long-distance trains. If a train is marked in a red colour, it is possible to expect that the train will be heavily occupied. Passengers without a reservation must expect that there will be very few unreserved seats on the train, or even that all seats will be occupied. In this case, the carrier recommends using a different train service run during off-peak hours. Options for avoiding full trains include departing very early in the morning or postponing your journey until Sunday, when it is expected that the main peak period has already been over.