Thirty Trolleybuses Sit in Řepy While Prague Argues Over a Translation

Thirty new Bozankaya SNG 12T trolleybuses will not enter service on Prague's three completed left-bank trolleybus routes with the timetable change starting on Saturday 29 August. The transport undertaking DPP still has not taken them into its ownership, although the acceptance procedure has been running for months, Zdopravy.cz reported on 27 August.

The first vehicles from last year's order reached Prague in January. The thirtieth, in PID livery, parked in the Řepy garages in May. They have been there since.

The problem is no longer the vehicles

DPP's transport director Jan Barchánek confirmed to Zdopravy.cz that even the latest talks with the manufacturer in mid-August did not remove the problems preventing acceptance. According to Zdopravy.cz's information, those problems no longer concern technical defects — those have been resolved.

The dispute is mainly about the vehicle documentation. DPP is not satisfied with the quality of the translation from Turkish into Czech. Zdopravy.cz reports that the argument extends to whether the trolleybus's electric motor "starts" or "switches on" — startuje or spíná in the contested Czech.

Bozankaya had not responded to questions sent by Zdopravy.cz.

It is easy to read that as pedantry, and harder to argue it is unreasonable. Vehicle documentation is what a depot fitter, a driver-trainer and an accident investigator all work from, and a verb that describes the wrong physical event in a traction system is a defect in the same sense a loose bolt is. It is simply a defect in a document rather than in a bus, which is why it has taken this long and been this invisible.

The width measurement that never quite closes

In mid-April the Czech rail authority Drážní úřad issued the vehicles a type approval decision for operation on trolleybus lines and their certificates of competence. From the regulators' point of view they are ready to run.

The authority has nonetheless still not issued its report on the check measurement of the vehicles' width. An unidentified requester has repeatedly asked the office about the course, details and result of that measurement under Act 106 on free access to information. In the replies published on the authority's website in April and again in August, it gives the same answer:

The check carried out verified that the measured widths of the vehicles are not in conflict with the documentation submitted as part of the application for type approval of the SNG 12T vehicle.

— Drážní úřad, response under Act 106/1999 Coll.

Three timetables, kept in a drawer

Because DPP needs several more working days after handover to fit the trolleybuses out for service — radios, for instance — it has sent ROPID three different versions of the new timetables for the future trolleybus lines. Which one takes effect depends on whether the vehicles are available.

Meanwhile electric operation on lines 51 and 53, restored in June to Bořislavka and Strahov, and on line 52 to Waltrovka, is being covered by a single inserted duty over and above the timetables of bus lines 131 and 176, and 137 respectively. Four SOR TNS 12 trolleybuses are standing in.

DPP selected the Turkish firm Bozankaya for the supply of up to 70 low-floor trolleybuses at the start of last year. The framework agreement is worth CZK 1.099 billion excluding VAT. Two orders have been placed so far: seven vehicles in the first and 23 in the second — the thirty now waiting in Řepy.