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Public transport in Prague is used daily by up to 300,000 less people than before the pandemic

Some of the missing passengers are tourists who do not come to Prague, and some people have switched to cars. This follows from a document prepared for the municipality by the Ropid organization.

Although the number of passengers is growing slightly, it is still below pre-pandemic levels. Although the biggest drop against the normal was recorded by the metro, with 28 percent fewer passengers, the least people in the metropolis use buses. In their case, it is a decrease of 27 percent from the original 1.015 million journeys per day to the current 737,000. On the contrary, most people use trams, which carry 907,000 people a day, which is 18 percent less than before the covid.

In June this year, 23 to 41 percent fewer people used public transport daily than before the pandemic. The largest decrease was also recorded in the subway, where it was up to 41 percent less passengers than normal.

Although public transport has returned to normal operation since the beginning of the school year, some restrictions still apply due to the covid. Due to the lack of tourists, the operation of line number 119 to the airport in Ruzyně is limited. The half-hour interval remains at the AE line, which runs from the center to the airport. The intervals of night lines are extended and the night departures of suburban trains are canceled until further notice. The nostalgic tram line number 23 is also out of order.

Scientists: Prague’s public transport is “not contagious”

Due to the pandemic, Prague’s public transport was used by about 40 percent less passengers year-on-year last year. The largest drop was recorded in the metro, which carried around 200,000 passengers a day during the first wave of the pandemic.

As the Seznam Reports reported some time ago, public transport is safe in terms of spreading covid. Only one percent of the samples collected in April from surfaces and air in Prague’s public transport contained residues of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. In addition, none of them were infectious.

“In other words – we should not get infected in the bus, tram, subway and lobbies. This applies in the conditions of consistent respiratory protection of each passenger and thorough disinfection of the premises by the Transport Company of the Capital City of Prague, “said scientists from the Institute of Physics of the Academy of Sciences.

They wiped various surfaces – special escalator handles, buttons, rods – into special sampling sets, but they also installed special equipment in the public transport premises that filtered the air.

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