The Number of Passengers Transported Increased by More than 4,000,000 in the First Half of the Year

Passengers continued to return to the trains operated by České dráhy in the first half of this year as well. The greatest interest is in international transport and the lines with modern trains, new services and short travel times.

“In the first half of this year, we carried over 79 million passengers, which is a year-on-year increase of more than 4 million customers,” says Michal Krapinec, Chairman of the Board of Directors and Director General of České dráhy, and adds: “We can observe the biggest increase in traffic on international lines. We are already carrying more passengers there than in 2019. The recovery is mainly due to tourists coming from abroad, including those from overseas, for example from America. The main reasons for this development include the continuing deferred demand for foreign holidays and the generally increasing popularity of rail transport for the purposes of leisure international travelling. As far as national transport is concerned, passengers are returning fastest on the routes where modern trains are in service, new services are offered and journey times are reduced. Such lines include, for example, the Western or Southern Express services. In regional transport, we register an increase in the numbers of passengers transported within the framework of integrated transport system fares as a result of the expansion of integrated transport services in other regions.”

There has also been a slight increase in terms of transportation output. This is 3.6 billion passenger kilometres for the first half of the year, which is some 10.3 million passenger kilometres more than in the first half of last year.

Nevertheless, the interest in travelling is still partly influenced by the change in habits from the COVID-19 pandemic, with a greater degree of telecommuting and other forms of work from employees’ homes and more use of video conferencing than was the case before 2020. At the same time, however, there is an increase in demand from those customers who travel for leisure activities.  Even for this reason, it is possible to state that passenger transport on the lines operated by České dráhy has already matched the pre-Covid years 2015 to 2019. Although České dráhy carried only 86% of passengers in comparison to 2019 figures, it is necessary to point out that this ratio is distorted by the change of the carrier occurring on some lines since 2019.