Trolleybuses Take Over Lines 51 and 53 at Weekends; Buses 131 and 176 Are Weeks From Ending

Prague's two newest trolleybus routes, opened with ceremony in June and run since then almost entirely by diesel buses, are finally becoming trolleybus routes. From Saturday 17 October, line 51 (Hradčanská – Hanspaulka – Bořislavka) and line 53 (Karlovo náměstí – Švandovo divadlo – Stadion Strahov) are worked only by trolleybuses at weekends and on public holidays. The bus lines that shadowed them, 131 and 176, stop running at weekends.

The change follows another delivery milestone. On Friday 16 October DPP completed acceptance of fifteen more Bozankaya SNG 12T battery trolleybuses and took them into its ownership. Of the thirty delivered under a framework contract for up to seventy, it now owns twenty-eight. The remaining two still need the manufacturer to fix defects and unfinished work, DPP says. When we last reported, on 23 September, the count was thirteen.

Weekends now, weekdays in two to three weeks

The vehicles going onto 51 and 53 this weekend are not the fifteen just accepted but ones taken over earlier. Until now each line had a single trolleybus duty and diesel buses on the rest. From Saturday all six weekend duties on 51 and all five on 53 are trolleybuses. On weekdays, when more vehicles are needed, the operation stays mixed: three duties on each line run as trolleybuses under the numbers 51 and 53, and the rest are still buses under 131 and 176. Zdopravy.cz puts the weekday totals at ten duties on 51 and eight on 53. Frequencies and the number of trips do not change.

The fifteen new vehicles first have to go through the checks the PID quality standards require. After that, DPP says, it will deploy them on 51, 53 and 52 and end bus lines 131 and 176 entirely.

"We assume that, given the technical and legislative processes, this step should come in roughly two to three weeks. Experience from operation on line 52 so far shows that these trolleybuses run very reliably."

— Jan Šurovský, deputy chairman of the DPP board and technical director, Surface

Diesel buses will then serve only as reserve, as they already do on line 52 to Waltrovka and Jinonice and on the older lines 58 to Letňany and 59 to the airport. Four SOR TNS 12 trolleybuses, obtained from the manufacturer earlier as compensation for the late start on line 58, will keep helping out, according to Zdopravy.cz.

Why now, before the batch is ready

DPP's reasoning for an intermediate step is money. Its traffic director says the electric vehicles are already cheaper to run than the buses they replace.

"At current diesel and electricity prices, running battery trolleybuses comes out cheaper than diesel buses. If we also take into account EU subsidies for the purchase of new trolleybuses and for building trolleybus lines, their operation is more advantageous than diesel buses in terms of full life-cycle costs too."

— Jan Barchánek, member of the DPP board and traffic director

It makes, he added, no sense for new trolleybuses to wait in garages while more expensive buses run on lines with newly built infrastructure. That is a fair description of the summer: the wires to Bořislavka and Strahov were finished in the first half of the year, but until now, as Zdopravy.cz puts it, passengers met a trolleybus on them only by chance.

With 51 and 53 converted, this year's three new lines — 51, 52 and 53 — are complete on electric traction. What remains open is the rest of the framework contract: DPP may call off up to seventy Bozankaya vehicles under it, and so far thirty have been delivered.