Czech Railways earned almost four billion crowns. Passenger transport was the driving force

We packed more than 164 million passengers into our trains, which traveled over eight billion kilometers with them, said the general editor of the Czech Railways, Michal Krapinec. This represents roughly seven million passengers, who traveled an average of 49 kilometers per trip on the blue trains.

The trend of returning passengers has been showing itself since the end of the covid restrictions. However, according to the railway authorities, the last year marked the fifth return of passengers to long-distance interstate transport, which grew at a double-digit rate, and the number of pasars using the first class also increased by a tenth.

According to Krapinec, the calming of prices on the energy market was also an important moment. Energy costs between countries increased only slightly from 10.8 billion to 11 billion. Revenues from passenger transport increased by those billions to a total of roughly 30 billions, which, together with a hit or slight increase in personal expenses, resulted in a profit of 623 million, compared to a loss of 128 million in 2022.

The group’s strong economy supported the asset management segment. Last year, it ended with a profit of 1.98 billion crowns against a projected loss of approximately 240 million in 2022. Meziron’s consolidation as a result of the economy was positively influenced by the sale of property (especially the sale of the development project Smchov). The first income from the sale of property against last year in the property management segment was K 1,845 million, the carrier stated in the previous announcement.

Freight transport presented by the company D Cargo also recorded an increase in profitability from approximately 310 million crowns in 2022 to 733 million crowns. However, the increase in profit is due to subsidiaries doing business in neighboring countries. No more than 60 percent of our transport is international. This means that it will exit, drive, transit or not at all through the Czech Republic, said the chairman of the board of D Cargo Tom Tth. However, the total amount of transported goods decreased. The volume of cargo transport decreased from 64 to 59 million tons of goods.

During the year, the company’s debt also increased by approximately five billion to 65 billion crowns. According to Krapinec, the reason is the effort to rejuvenate the vehicle fleet, in which the carrier invested 11 billion crowns last year. The average age of the team fell from 34 to 32 years. Within ten years, the company aims to spend around 160 billion crowns on new trains. That would mean an average of 100 blue trains for 25 years, Krapinec added.

esk railways are one of the largest domestic employers. In the group, which, in addition to the Czech railways and freight D Cargo, for example, the D Telematics optical station manager or the State of Railway Research, employ almost 22 thousand people, of which 10 thousand work in Czech railways. The carrier paid out bonuses due to the improved economy.

This allowed us to pay extraordinary remuneration to employees as compensation for the high inflation in the past period, as an appreciation of the positive results in passenger transport, and it also allowed us to stabilize the employee base in a very complex labor market, where there is a shortage of train drivers and a general demand for technical professions, he said in Krapinec crows water at first.

If the Czech Republic falls in the liberalization of the railways and the elimination of the monopoly of the national carrier on the railways to the European prizes, the Czech Republic will maintain the railways in terms of transport. According to data from the Ministry of Transport, last year the domestic railway transported 185 million pasars, of which 164 million passengers were transported to D.