4. Transport Equipment

Up-to-date vehicle fleet at a standard European level is available in the railway transport for trains of the highest quality (SuperCity, EuroCity, InterCity) which are providing for connection with important centres in the Czech Republic and in neighbouring countries as well.

In general it may be stated that the railway transport equipment is relatively obsolete. Average age of track vehicles for passenger transport is rather high. For electric locomotives it amounts to 24.5 years, 28.5 years for electric units, 21.5 years for diesel rail cars, 22.6 years for passenger cars in international traffic and 25.7 years for passenger cars in national traffic.

In order to ensure the servicing of the territory with transport the support for the rehabilitation of passenger transport vehicles has been included among priority objectives of the Ministry of Transport and Communications.

As far as the urban public transport is concerned there are 35% of trolleybuses younger then 8 years however over 72% of trams in service and about 80% of Prague metro vehicles are older than 12 years.

In the passenger car transport the degree of automobilization (number of passenger cars per 1000 population) increased from 295 in 1995 to 344 in 2001, which represents 17% growth in 5 years. A positive phenomenon in this connection is the increase in the share of vehicles younger than 5 years from 18% in 1995 to 20% in 2001. However, it still remains a reality that the average age of passenger cars is 13.6 years and the average age of all vehicles registered in the Czech Republic is even 16.4 years.

In the commercial air service the year 2000 saw the rehabilitation and modernisation of the aircraft fleet so that nowadays out of the total 37 aircraft with maximum take-off weight 16 tones and more, used by Czech Republic’s carriers, 11 aircraft are younger than 5 years, 11 aircraft fall under the age category from 5 to 10 years and 15 aircraft fall under the age category from 10 to 15 years.