Publication details
Railways in Prague - Tying and Cutting the Gordian Knot
| Authors | |
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| Year of publication | 2022 |
| Type | Chapter of a book |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | The early railway lines of the mid-nineteenth century were usually built as private businesses without any aspirations to connect to each other. Competition rather than cooperation was the day-by-day situation, but the networks became denser during the 1860s and 1870s. The overall effect in bigger cities was that the different railway companies had to build stations in the city centre. These results are still visible in metropolises like London or Paris, where stations correspond to former rival railway companies. Passengers needed to cross the busy city centre to reach a railway station of another railway company. As for passenger transport, this does not seem to be convenient as it requires transfers from one station to another throughout the busy city centre. An open market with free competition and no restrictions creates a suboptimal solution: disconnections of particular railways created additional costs for passengers as well as shippers, separated stations used much more valuable land in town centres, transhipments of cars and building of connecting lines increased costs as well as land use. The cities were encountering these costs and difficulties for decades, more or less improving their networks mainly after the merger of railway companies and their nationalisation. The chapter analyses the case study of the Czech city of Prague. |
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