Bus 137 Ran for the Last Time on Sunday. On Monday the Route Is Trolleybus 52

Prague's transport undertaking ended bus line 137 with the close of daytime service on Sunday 20 September. From the first pull-out on Monday 21 September the route from Na Knížecí via Waltrovka to Jinonice runs as trolleybus line 52, and it runs that way permanently.

What made the date possible is a count. DPP says it has now taken thirteen Bozankaya SNG 12T battery trolleybuses into its own ownership — enough to cover ten duties on line 52 every day and still hold something back. The vehicles ready for regular service carry the fleet numbers 527–531, 533–537 and 540; 538 and 539 are still being prepared. Whatever is not needed on 52 goes into the operating reserve or onto selected duties of lines 51 and 53.

What changes for passengers

One thing, and it is not the vehicle. On the old bus 137, the leg from the Waltrovka stop up to Jinonice was not served on every run. On trolleybus 52 every second service will make it, on working days and at weekends and holidays alike.

Otherwise the route is the route. The difference is the traction, and DPP's political sponsor made the case for it in terms of the hill.

After several months of combined operation of trolleybus line 52 alongside bus 137, we have reached the point where the transport undertaking, after defects were removed, has taken over from the manufacturer the number of vehicles that allows us to flip this line, which is key for Malvazinky, fully to electric traction. For local people it means quiet operation, locally without emissions, and new vehicles with dynamic acceleration uphill and the ability to recuperate energy on the way back down to Na Knížecí. It is precisely these properties that make trolleybuses the ideal means of transport for hilly Prague.

— Jaromír Beránek, first deputy mayor of Prague for transport

The rest of the order

Two more Bozankaya SNG 12T are at an advanced stage of the acceptance process. Once they pass into DPP's ownership and are made ready, they go onto lines 51 and 53. Across all the new trolleybus lines DPP will also use four SOR TNS 12 vehicles, the aim being to have trolleybuses on as many duties as possible.

Diesel buses do not disappear from the route. They stay as the operating reserve on 52, and will do the same on 51 and 53 once those are converted permanently — the arrangement already in place on the existing trolleybus lines 58 and 59.

Why the date matters

This desk has been following the Bozankaya order since late August, when the vehicles had been delivered but not accepted and the conversion had no date on it. As we reported on 7 September, DPP had by then signed the acceptance protocol for the first eleven and said the 137 would be next to go. It has now gone, two weeks later, and the reason given for the wait — defects removed before the vehicles were taken over from the manufacturer — is the one DPP repeats in this announcement too.

A single route is a small thing beside a metro line. But the 137 is the one where the argument for trolleybuses is easiest to see: a climb out of Na Knížecí to Malvazinky that a diesel bus takes loudly and a trolleybus takes on the wire, giving part of the energy back on the way down. The conversion is also the first of the three new lines to be finished rather than announced, and the other two now have a precedent with a date attached.