Hello, southern neighbor. Czech railways were never great when it came to punctuality, but this year takes the cake, with several big works on the main railway arteries taking place concurrently.
A delay of an hour is pretty ordinary and, in the last timetable, they stretched the journey times almost back to the 1980s levels, in order to have at least some semblance of regularity.
We need some high speed rail like hell, there just isn't enough tracks to carry our admittedly massive rail traffic. Any irregularity will throw everything out of the loop.
Unfortunately, NIMBYs and BANANAs are doing their best to prevent any development of anything anywhere ever. This is a movement that really fulfills the "the dose makes the poison" adage. In reasonable amounts, it can prevent highways from being built brutally across residential areas like in China. In current amounts, it can prevent you from building a detached house on your own property in a normal residential area full of other houses, because f-k you that's why, your lot has always been an overgrown ex-garden and will stay so until I die.
I would love it if we got high-speed rail but I cannot see it happening any time soon. One thing I can say is that rail travel here is insanely cheap and compared to UK and my experience has been that it's generally more punctual with more frequent services. I must admit though, I haven't travelled by rail a great deal this year (only a couple of local journeys like Brno->Hustopeče, and Brno->Adamov) so I haven't encountered the delays you've described, that sounds painful.
edit: actually I just looked up Czech high-speed rail and found a wikipedia page. Apparently there are a set of HSR routes already approved and planned out, with a more direct Prague-Brno line via Jihlava supposedly due to start in 2025. Any idea if this is realistic, or if it should be taken with a generous pinch of salt?
A delay of an hour is pretty ordinary and, in the last timetable, they stretched the journey times almost back to the 1980s levels, in order to have at least some semblance of regularity.
We need some high speed rail like hell, there just isn't enough tracks to carry our admittedly massive rail traffic. Any irregularity will throw everything out of the loop.
Unfortunately, NIMBYs and BANANAs are doing their best to prevent any development of anything anywhere ever. This is a movement that really fulfills the "the dose makes the poison" adage. In reasonable amounts, it can prevent highways from being built brutally across residential areas like in China. In current amounts, it can prevent you from building a detached house on your own property in a normal residential area full of other houses, because f-k you that's why, your lot has always been an overgrown ex-garden and will stay so until I die.