Line 145 Will Stop at Kuchyňka, Putting the First Break in Its Run Under the Hill

Bus line 145 will begin calling at Kuchyňka on V Holešovičkách from 29 September, the day the academic year starts. Prague 8 announced the change on 10 September and says the transport organiser ROPID has entered the stop into the line's timetables from that date.

It is a single stop, and on the face of it a small piece of housekeeping. It is worth more than that, because of where the stop is and because of what line 145 was set up to do six weeks ago.

The gap the line was designed with

When PID put the tunnel bus into service on 15 August, the release describing the route was explicit about the middle section. From the metro at Kobylisy the bus runs Nad Šutkou into Zenklova as far as Vychovatelna, and then, in PID's own words, "již bez zastávek projede ulici V Holešovičkách, zajede do tunelového komplexu Blanka a její další zastávkou bude až Hradčanská u metra A." No stops between Vychovatelna and Hradčanská — the whole descent of V Holešovičkách and the run through Blanka, taken without opening the doors. That is what buys the line its scheduled sub-twenty-minute run from Kobylisy to Dejvická, at six-minute headways in the morning peak.

Kuchyňka sits inside exactly that stretch. Adding it is the first concession the express profile has made.

Who asked, and on whose behalf

Prague 8 says it raised the stop with ROPID repeatedly, and that the change also had the backing of the leadership of Charles University, which sent the district a formal request for it. The district had separately been talking to representatives of the university's Faculty of Mathematics and Physics about how the site is served.

The site is the university complex at Pelc–Tyrolka, immediately next to the stop. Prague 8 lists three institutions there — the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of Charles University, the Czech Technical University, and Charles University's Faculty of Humanities — along with halls of residence with a capacity of roughly 1,400 beds. Until now line 145 has passed all of it at speed.

Zastavování linky 145 na Kuchyňce je logickým krokem. Autobus dosud míjel významný univerzitní areál bez možnosti zastavení, přestože právě zde žijí a studují stovky studentů a působí několik fakult. To byla absurdní situace. Jsem proto rád, že se podařilo naše opakované žádosti prosadit a od 29. září bude 145 na Kuchyňce skutečně zastavovat.

— Martin Jedlička, councillor for transport, Prague 8

What it connects

What matters is the specific pairing the tunnel bus makes possible. Line 145, in PID's description, offers a fast direct link between Kobylisy and Dejvice. Calling at Kuchyňka joins the Pelc–Tyrolka complex to the other large university campus in the city, the one around Vítězné náměstí in Dejvice, without a change and without the surface route around the bend of the river.

Jedlička also frames it more broadly than the campus:

Dopravní dostupnost mezi Libní a Dejvicemi je důležitá nejen pro studenty a zaměstnance univerzitního areálu, ale také pro obyvatele Prahy 8 z oblasti Holešoviček.

— Martin Jedlička, councillor for transport, Prague 8

The trade nobody has priced yet

Neither Prague 8 nor PID has published a revised running time for the line with the stop in it, and the August release remains the only public statement of what 145 is scheduled to do. A stop costs time — the deceleration, the dwell, the merge back into V Holešovičkách, which is a fast road on a gradient. Whether that shows up in the timetable or is absorbed inside the existing allowance is the thing to watch when the new timetables appear.

What it demonstrates in the meantime is that the express character of the line is negotiable, and that a district with a specific case and a university willing to put it in writing can move it. The first request produced a stop in six weeks. There will be others along that road.