Prague Puts Dates on the Petřín Funicular's Stations. Újezd First, All Three Step-Free by 2030

The Petřín funicular went back into service on Tuesday morning with two new cars on a rebuilt track. Its three stations were not part of that work. Prague has now set out the order in which they will be, and the dates are further out than the reopening suggests.

Jaromír Beránek, the city's first deputy mayor for transport, told the transport daily Zdopravy.cz that the discussions about the final arrangement finish this year, that project preparation runs through 2027 — possibly with the first stage of work on the Újezd station inside it — and that Nebozízek and the upper Petřín station follow in 2028. A second stage at Újezd closes the sequence.

"The planned timetable assumes that we finish the discussions about the final arrangement this year. Next year there will be project preparation, and possibly already the first stage of the reconstruction of the Újezd station,"

Jaromír Beránek, first deputy mayor of Prague for transport

The decision behind the schedule was taken in June, when the city council approved the intent to make all three stations step-free. Prague put the cost then at 80 million crowns excluding VAT and the completion of the whole project at 2030. That June resolution is also where the hardware is specified: two lifts at Újezd, one lift at Nebozízek, and a new side step-free entrance to the Petřín station from the Rose Garden.

The lower station carries most of the work

Újezd faces the largest changes of the three. A new lift vestibule is to be built at the exit staircase, connecting the station with the upper level of the park, because the station's present second access route does not meet the standards for step-free access. Next to the substation, the scheme adds facilities with accessible toilets and new space for staff.

Underneath that sits the problem that was already visible when the line reopened: the operator does not own everything it runs on. The funicular's current operating facilities occupy part of a building with a more complicated ownership structure, and Beránek named that as work in its own right.

"We want to settle those complicated property relations,"

Jaromír Beránek

Prague also wants the stations to look like themselves again. Beránek said the final treatment of the stations is bound up with the accessibility work, and that the city would like to return their original historical design. Újezd has already had some partial attention ahead of the reopening: a mural by the artist Michal Škapa, on the theme S láskou na Petřín — With Love to Petřín.

Staged so the line does not stop again

The point of splitting the work into phases is that the funicular has just been out of service for two years and the city does not intend to repeat that.

"It should proceed with smaller — I am not saying no — but with smaller operating restrictions, so that the operation of the funicular is more or less maintained. The most important thing is that afterwards the funicular will be one hundred per cent step-free,"

Jaromír Beránek

The stations were left out of the reconstruction that has just finished, which covered the track, the technology and the cars. Beránek's explanation is about timing rather than about priorities: the modernisation of the technology and the replacement of the cars were brought forward in response to the state of the Petřín hillside, and finishing the stations for the reopening was not realistic. He said accessibility remains a priority.

DPP began regular trial operation of the fourth-generation cars between Újezd and Petřín at 7.00 on Tuesday, almost exactly two years after the previous generation last carried passengers on 13 September 2024. Read together, the two halves of this project describe a familiar split: the part of the line the operator controls outright was rebuilt in two years, and the part that runs through somebody else's building has a schedule instead.