New yellow trains take on king of the rails

It was an historic day for commuters Monday as the first RegioJet train rolled on to the tracks, the first ever challenge to the state-owned Czech Railways. Though the brand new RegioJet has only three trains, travellers from Prague to Ostrava or vice versa now have a choice of services for the first time, and it looks like the competition is going to get interesting.

Photo: Student Agency

The sound of this music doesn’t mean you’ve died and gone to heaven – you’re only sitting on the toilet in one of the new yellow wagons serviced by Student Agency, the company that has been offering inexpensive luxury bus rides around the Czech Republic and Europe for a decade now. This is how the new RegioJet plans to rival a virtual state monopoly on the railways: with hitherto undreamt of services for passengers. Free newspapers and beverages, free internet service and better mobile phone signals, cheaper tickets, cheaper food, more space, cleaner surroundings, modernised trains, electrical sockets, and stewardesses. It’s a revolution in cross country train travel, and the kings of the rails aren’t happy about it. Antonín Blažek is a deputy director of Czech Railways.

“The Czech public has been hearing about getting the most modern, most luxurious trains with six classes and so on for a long time, and as we see, five years later, we do get yellow trains, but they’re reconstructed 30-year-old wagons with 25-year-old locomotives. I don’t deny that they have nice interiors for the time being, but I would contend that we have similar trains. The difference is that we have 3,000 wagons; about 150 of those have luxury interiors as well. And you will see many changes to come in the trains of Czech Railways.”

Indeed, the lavatories of Czech Railways’ long-distance express trains were surprisingly free of graffiti and stickiness on Monday, as journalists with cameras piled into the wagons to compare services. By coincidence, Czech Railways said, they had chosen the day to begin handing out, not water and coffee as on RegioJet, but Pepsi Cola, and only on the Prague to Ostrava their new competitors have inhabited. Watching the services war commence will be interesting to be sure, particularly how it will affect prices. Travelling by train until now has not been a particularly cheap affair, particularly with 200-crown mandatory reservation fees tacked on to Czech Railways’ upscale Pendolino trains. With RegioJet, the Prague to Pardubice service for example is almost one-third less expensive, 130 crowns compared to 335. Still, the fledgling company has to face up to an important obstacle for any would-be railroad tycoon: Czech Railways are still faster. Radim Jančura is the director of Student Agency:

“Czech Railways may be faster, which is certainly important for some people. But when you’re paying twice as much for it as in our trains, and aren’t able to work on the internet, then it’s worse. In any case, that’s a decision that’s up to each individual customer. I don’t expect to win over every customer, but our presence on the railways will be a benefit to everyone: to customers, and even to Czech Railways.”

Well that’s certainly not the last we’ve heard from Radim Jančura – in time the company intends to heavily increase its traffic on the Prague Ostrava line, and next stop after that, Brno.