The Petřín Funicular Reopens on Tuesday. Its Stations Stay Inaccessible Until 2030

The Prague public transport company, DPP, begins trial operation of the Petřín funicular with passengers on Tuesday 22 September. The first departure is at 7.00, the last at 22.15, and cars run every ten minutes. That is almost exactly two years since the third-generation cars made their last run.

The line did not close for the rebuild. In September 2024 extreme rainfall damaged both the track and part of the Petřín hillside, and because a full reconstruction of the trackbed and a replacement of the cars were already planned, DPP never restarted it. What followed was a complete renewal of the trackbed over the whole length of the line, new rails, new rope technology and new technical equipment.

Three things change

Two of them a passenger meets on the first trip.

The single fare rises from 60 to 100 crowns, or 90 crowns bought through the PID Lítačka app. Season ticket holders are unaffected: a monthly, quarterly or annual Prague pass still covers the funicular, as do day and three-day tickets and the Prague Visitor Pass. It remains free for children under 15, for passengers over 65, and for the other groups who travel free on Prague public transport.

The second change is operational. Going down from Petřín to Újezd, the cars will no longer call at Nebozízek. That removes one stop from every descent, which PID says will speed up the turnaround of the cars and raise the line's carrying capacity. The rest of DPP's technical figures are unchanged: 509 metres of track, 126.19 metres of rise, a maximum gradient of 296 per mille, a speed of 4 m/s, a journey time of 3.2 minutes and a capacity of 100 people.

The third change is the cars themselves. The two new fourth-generation panoramic cars were designed by the studio Anna Marešová designers and built by the Doppelmayr/Garaventa group. DPP points to their larger glazed area and to one detail worth recording because it is a decision about operation rather than about a brochure: as the two cars pass each other on the track, one of them "winks" and the other changes the colour of its interior lighting.

One thing does not

The stations will not be step-free when the line reopens, and will not be for years. PID says accessibility is expected by 2030 and that project preparation is only starting now — "after long debates, in particular with the owners of the building on Újezd in which the lower station sits". Property settlement, a contractor tender and then construction in 2029 and 2030 follow.

That is the most telling figure in a two-year reconstruction. The track was taken apart and put back, the cars are new, the slope has been stabilised — and the way into the lower station is unresolved, because it does not stand on the operator's land but inside somebody else's building. The rebuild fixed what DPP controls.

The funicular has run since 25 July 1891, originally on a water-balance drive. It stopped in 1921, probably because of the price of water, and returned in 1932 rebuilt for electric traction. Landslides destroyed the track in 1965 and it took twenty years to come back, in 1985, when it was folded into the city transport network. This closure is the second longest in its history, and the second brought on by the hillside moving.