Zahradníček’s blog for English speaking students

Part twenty three: Tram, or bus?

If you want to go through Brno, you have several ways, how to do it.

In the centre, you can walk on foot, but to walk like this to the peripherial parts takes too long
time.

Of course, you can also drive a car, but the traffic jams are common, parking in the city is
complicated, and Greta Thunberg would not thank you for it.

Cycling is fine, but in Brno, it is not a priority for the officials; some cycling paths are good
(especially that one along the Svratka river), but many others are just fragments that have a
couple of metres and continue to nowhere.

So one of relatively good ways how to get from one part of Brno to another is the public traffic
system. It works relatively rood, although also this system sometimes keeps staying in the traffic
jams. But at least the trams use to have their own corridors and they can continue even if cars
have to stop.

An advantage of city transport is that it is a part of regional transport system, so for majority
of the ticket types (but not for SMS ticket and smatphone app Sejf ticket) you can use more than
trams, trolleybuses and city buses: it is also possible to use trains (for example from the main
station to Židenice) and regional buses. And when having a card for Brno, it is not necessary to
buy the full-price ticket when travelling (for example) to Blansko; it is possible to buy a ticket
just for the remaining zones.

The city transport in Brno started in 1869 (that is why in 2019 there has been a huge celebration
of 150^th anniversary). The first transport mean has bean a horse-tram. In 1884 the horses were
replaced by the steam power; even now you can see the Caroline (the original locomotive) during
some feasts. In 1900 first electric trams started to traffic in Brno. Buses started in the 30’s and
trolleybuses in 1949. During the same time, of course, the trains around Brno developped, too; we
should not forget that the first train came to Brno already in 1839, that means six years sooner
than to Prague.

Today’s city traffic has some special things. For example, night buses. The advantage of night
buses is that there is no tram traffic during the night and so small repairs of the rails can be
done without any need for closures. Another advantage is that one bus replaces a tram plus a bus
that would (so or so) continue to the parts of the city that have no tram rails, or even to
surrounding villages.

Many people know that all buses meet at the railway station every hour and also half past eleven,
half past midnight (just on Satudays and Sundays) and in some special times in the early morning.
But people do not know that the system is even more clever: there exist some special change points
on some stops like Anthropos or Svratecká, so you can get from one point to another without going
through the main station even if your bus line does not go straight to your direction.

Another special thing that people usually do not know is the organisation of the traffic between
9.30 and 10.45 p. m. – the trams have „meetings“ at the railway station every quarer an hour –
lines No. 1, 4, 8 and 12 at 00, 15, 30 and 45 minutes and No. 2, 9 and 12 (again) at 08, 23, 38 and
53.

So the Brno trams and buses, if you know how to use them, are really good. And if you look at the
mapa.idsjmk.cz website, you can find the at-the-moment position of all trams, troleybuses, city
buses, but also regional buses and trains in the whole South-Moravian region. In the summer, you
can even find there position of the ships on the Brno reservoir; they, too, are a part of the South
Moravian traffic system.

                                                             Ondřej Zahradníček, 31^st October 2019