The Heritage Tram Drops Vinohrady and Runs to Masaryk Station Instead

Prague's nostalgic tram line 23 has lost its Vinohrady end. From Saturday 19 September the line runs from Královka to Bílá labuť on Na Poříčí, a few minutes' walk from Masaryk station, rather than to Zvonařka. Regionální organizátor Pražské integrované dopravy files the change among its permanent alterations for September and October, not among closures or diversions.

The bulletin, published on 23 September and updated on 25 September, gives the route in abbreviated form — Královka, Pražský hrad, Malostranská, Újezd, Národní třída, Václavské náměstí, Bílá labuť. Dopravní podnik's own page for the line carries the full stop list, and it is the eastern half that has changed: after Národní třída the tram now goes Lazarská, Vodičkova, Václavské náměstí, Jindřišská, Masarykovo nádraží, Bílá labuť. Westward the line is as it was, running Královka, Malovanka, Hládkov, Pohořelec, Brusnice, Pražský hrad, Královský letohrádek, Malostranská, Malostranské náměstí, Pražské Jezulátko, Tyršův dům, Újezd and Národní divadlo, with Hládkov and Pražské Jezulátko served in one direction only and Pohořelec and Tyršův dům in the other.

What has gone is the leg beyond Národní třída towards I. P. Pavlova and the Zvonařka terminus. When the line was introduced on 25 March 2017, Expats.cz reported that it would run between Královka and Zvonařka and serve Prague Castle, Malá Strana and Vinohrady. Vinohrady is the part it no longer reaches.

No reason given

Neither source says why. ROPID's bulletin is a list of changes with dates against line numbers and carries no explanation for any of them; DPP's line page simply publishes the new route as the route, with no note that it is new. That is worth stating plainly rather than filling in: the change is attested, the reason is not.

The line itself is unchanged in character. DPP says it runs daily, is worked entirely by modernised T3 cars, and takes the standard PID tariff — a ticket bought by contactless card on board, from a machine or at a sales point, the same as on any other tram. It operates from roughly 8.30 to 18.00 at a 30-minute interval, and 31 minutes end to end.

Why the T3s are here at all

Line 23 is where Prague's T3s ended up. Regular service with the type began on 22 November 1962 on lines 4 and 27, and the last formal farewell to the T3 in Prague was at the Hostivař open day in 2011; DPP says passengers can now meet modernised cars of the type only on line 23. The line's own service started on 25 March 2017, which the operator notes was the 109th anniversary of the birth of František Kardaus, the T3's designer. Line 23 has form for last runs: the final T1 journey in Prague, on 25 January 1983, went out from the Střešovice depot on the same number.

The rest of the bulletin

The reroute is the second of two headline items in ROPID's permanent-changes list. The first was the switch of Na Knížecí – Waltrovka – Jinonice to full trolleybus operation as line 52 from 21 September and the withdrawal of bus 137, which we covered on 23 September. Below those, bus 145 gained a bidirectional stop at Kuchyňka from 29 September, and five suburban lines — 498, 794, 795, 801 and 841 — took on school services or year-round operation through September and October.

A heritage line is still a scheduled line on the ordinary tariff, which is our reading of why this is more than a curiosity: where it runs decides what a visitor with no plan sees from a tram window. Trading the climb into Vinohrady for Na Poříčí swaps a residential slope for an interchange with the railway, and puts the eastern terminus where arriving passengers are rather than where the line used to stop.