Czechia’s domestic railway carrier České dráhy (ČD) transported almost 169 million passengers who travelled altogether 8.28 billion kilometres in 2024.
The number of passengers transported achieved a growth for both national and international trains of the national carrier on a year-on-year basis, with a total increase of 4 million compared to 2023.
“The number of passengers transported increased by approximately 3% on a year-on-year basis to 168.8 million passengers. The increase occurred in national transport and more significantly also on international lines, where the number of passengers increased by 12% compared to 2023, and the total number of passengers on international lines exceeded 7 million. These trends show that the decision to invest massively in the acquisition of new railway vehicles for regional and long-distance transport was the right one and it is possible to observe a positive response from passengers as well,” said Michal Krapinec, the Director General of České dráhy.
Passengers on board the ČD’s trains travelled 211 million kilometres more in 2024. The average distance travelled over the entire period was 49 kilometres, i.e. virtually unchanged compared to 2023. In national passenger transport, 2% more passengers were transported on a year-on-year basis. Concerning international passenger transport, there was registered a 12% increase in the number of passengers, and the same percentage increase was achieved in the international train transport from the viewpoint of transport performance.
The highest increase was on the line connecting Prague with Dresden, Berlin and Hamburg, Prague with Brno and Vienna, Prague with Poland, as well as on other long-distance domestic lines. “We are responding to the growing demand by deploying ComfortJet trainsets, which offer up to 100 more seats than Railjets or regular EuroCity trains. In the area of regional transport, we can see an increase in the number of passengers transported, for example in the Hradec Králové Region, where new vehicles were deployed in the course of the year,” Michal Krapinec explained.
České dráhy could have achieved an even larger increase in the number of passengers and transport performance last year, but this was prevented by the autumn floods which affected mainly Northern Moravia and Silesia. The floods interrupted transport on the main railway corridor to Ostrava, including international lines to Poland and Slovakia, as well as the operation of intensively used regional lines in the Ostrava conurbation for several days. For a period of up to several weeks, they completely stopped railway transport on many railway lines in Silesia.
During the annual validity period of the 2024/2025 timetable, ČD will dispatch approximately 2.4 million services covering 119 million kilometres. The average daily number of trains is 6,605. Thanks to train upgrade projects, 439 wheelchair accessible services, 798 train services with on-board Wi-Fi or 1,430 trains with electrical sockets have been added on a year-on-year basis.
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