Czech passenger trains may lose rail priority under new EU rules

Czechia is preparing to change the rules that decide which trains get a place in the railway timetable. At present, passenger trains take precedence over freight, but a new European regulation requires non-discriminatory rules that do not place one type of transport above another. The new rules are due by the end of next year, and timetables based on them will start to be built from 2030.

On Thursday, representatives of the Railway Administration, passenger and freight carriers and the Office for the Protection of Competition (ÚOHS) met at the Ministry of Transport for the first time to discuss future rules on access to infrastructure and capacity allocation. Oldřich Sládek, executive director of the freight carriers' association ŽESNAD.cz, said the task would be very difficult: carriers will provide data on the minimum number of “slots” (paths per hour) they need on each line.

Who goes first today

When a line lacks room for everyone who wants to use it — as happens on corridors and around large cities — passenger trains currently have priority. As ÚOHS deputy chairman Petr Solský explained, passenger services run under public service obligations (regional and long-distance) go first, followed by trains operated at commercial risk, and freight comes last. As a result, freight trains are left with less room on the tracks.

The new regulation does not say outright who should have priority. The order is to be decided by the socio-economic benefit of the trains competing for the same path. The specific order will be set by the Ministry of Transport. According to ministry spokesman František Jemelka, the process has only just begun: a number of documents must first be adopted, including Czechia's strategic guidelines, a strategy and a capacity allocation model.

The dispute over priority

According to Seznam Zprávy, the main dispute is whether priority will remain for commissioned passenger services paid for by the regions or the ministry. Passenger carriers are already prepared for the end of absolute priority. Petr Moravec, director of the SVOD Bohemia association, noted that the railway is critical infrastructure, and it is hard to accept that a sightseeing railcar would be given precedence over a freight train carrying humanitarian aid for Ukraine.

Moravec also proposes changing the system itself: instead of the current model, in which the Railway Administration processes applications one by one, carriers should be offered paths at prices known in advance. In his words, capacity needs to be managed rather than handed out almost for free. Freight trains, Sládek added, do not run only at night; they need slots around the clock.

The second contentious issue is funding. The regulation envisages long-term strategic investment planning, which means a horizon considerably longer than the annual state budget. A source familiar with the talks says such investments would effectively become the equivalent of mandatory budget spending, which politicians do not want. The Railway Administration and the Ministry of Transport did not respond to questions about investment policy.

Around Prague, based on reporting by seznamzpravy.cz