Ten Trains Short on Wednesday, Three on Thursday — and No Reserve Either Way

For one day in September, commuters on České dráhy services around Prague travelled in half-length trains. The operator had an unusually high number of CityElefant electric units out of service and ran single units on services that normally take two coupled together. A day later most of it was over — which is the good news, and also the reason the episode is worth keeping.

The numbers came from ČD spokeswoman Vanda Rajnochová, who told Zdopravy.cz on the morning of 9 September that 24 of the 71 CityElefant units the operator runs in Prague and Central Bohemia were out of service. Operational need is 57. That left the fleet roughly ten trains short of what the timetable required, and the shortfall landed on lines S1, S9 and partly S7.

The regional politician who orders those services put it more bluntly. Petr Borecký, the Central Bohemian councillor for public transport, said 22 CityElefants and three RegioPanters had been out of service the previous day, and that enough vehicles could not be returned to traffic even for the Wednesday morning peak.

So you will probably be standing on one leg, and not even on your own one.

— Petr Borecký, Central Bohemian councillor for public transport

České dráhy will be fined, according to Borecký. The operator said on X that it had managed to keep every service running, that many trains were formed of one unit rather than the usual two and therefore had lower capacity, and that it was working intensively to return vehicles to service — adding that the restrictions might persist for days. On affected trains, first-class compartments were available without a surcharge, and the region asked passengers not to take their frustration out on conductors, who cannot influence train length.

It was over the next morning

It did not persist for days. By the morning of 10 September only three units were missing from the roster, Rajnochová told Zdopravy.cz, and most trains were running in their usual formation and at planned capacity.

Thanks to the extraordinary effort of maintenance staff and cooperation with suppliers, we managed during Wednesday to cut the number of missing units in service by roughly two thirds.

— Vanda Rajnochová, spokeswoman, České dráhy

Filip Drápal, spokesman for PID, said the organiser was glad the problems had been eliminated quickly and praised both the operator's effort and what he called exemplary intensive communication with the ordering authorities.

Two thirds of a fleet gap closed in a single day is a real piece of work by a maintenance department. It is also a measure of what kind of gap it was: not a fleet that had broken, but a fleet with nothing spare, in which a bad coincidence of ordinary events empties the roster and a good day of overtime refills it.

The causes, and the one with a date on it

Rajnochová listed several reasons at once: technical faults, scheduled maintenance, damage from incidents and collisions with animals, and the ongoing installation of the European train protection system ETCS on part of the fleet — above all on the units intended for the corridor lines around Prague. The faults themselves are mundane: door repairs, air conditioning.

It is the ETCS work that has a deadline attached, and the deadline was confirmed the following day. Správa železnic told operators and ordering authorities in a bulk message that from 13 December no train will be admitted between Prague and České Budějovice without the onboard part of the European signalling system. Exclusive ETCS operation extends over a further 157 kilometres, between Praha-Zahradní Město and České Budějovice, plus the link between Uhříněves and Malešice. The announcement was framed as definitive, ending speculation that the start might be put off again; historic trains without ETCS will get on only by special exemption applied for well in advance.

That is a hard date for a fleet that has to be retrofitted one unit at a time, and the units come out of traffic to be fitted. The shortage is, in part, the price of the deadline being kept.

What the system is actually doing

The reliability case for exclusive operation has improved sharply. Správa železnic's figures put the share of trips — the interruptions of the connection that force a train to stop — at 0.27 percent in the first half of this year, with 0.22 percent in July and 0.33 percent in August. Last year the full-year figure was 0.64 percent, and in the first months of exclusive operation it was far worse, running to dozens of cases a day.

Tomáš Konopáč, who heads ERTMS strategy and technology at Správa železnic, attributed the improvement to a set of regime measures across the network — scheduled maintenance of the transmission system set long in advance — and to better functioning of the onboard equipment, particularly the communication antennas and odometry.

The December change also removes hardware from the lineside: all speed boards and distant speed boards for speeds above 100 km/h go, roughly 450 of them, because above that speed the driver will get the permitted speed only through ETCS. Boards for 100 km/h and below stay, precisely so drivers have something to read when ETCS drops out.

This has happened before, for the same reasons

While it was going on, Drápal said the organiser was in close contact with the operator and believed it was doing everything it could to raise the number of serviceable units.

The situation naturally does not please us at all.

— Filip Drápal, spokesman, PID

Prague is not seeing this for the first time. In December 2024, only 51 of the same 71 units were serviceable — nine below the minimum the ordering authorities considered necessary — and the cause then was the same combination of technical faults, maintenance and ETCS installation. Two shortages two years apart, produced by the same three things, describe a fleet with no spare capacity to lose. The fine is for the symptom. The reserve is the problem.

And the ETCS retrofit still has three months to run. The units keep coming out of traffic to be fitted, one at a time, until 13 December.