Repairs at the Main Station benefited the homeless

Prague - Passengers traveling by train from Prague's Main Station have already gotten used to the renovations of the building and platforms according to Czech Railways. Passenger processing is no longer problematic, said ČTK spokesman Ondřej Kubala. Only in the area where people wait for their train and inquire about arrival times, there is occasionally a bit tight, because the construction work has taken away part of the space for those waiting. The renovations have brought new shelter options for the homeless, making it more challenging for the railways to remove them from the station now.
    "Of course, any change in the organization of boarding and disembarking passengers, especially if the Railway Infrastructure Administration closes two of the three underpasses, will generate reactions from passengers in the first few days. Even though there are information boards everywhere and public announcements, it takes a moment for everyone to get used to it," said Kubala. The railways have already moved the domestic ticket counters for daily operations, international counters, and luggage lockers in the autumn.
    Due to construction work at the station, various nooks have also been created where homeless people can hide. "Unfortunately, the homeless are a bit of a puzzle. The upper ticket hall is our territory; we cooperate with a security agency that is pushing the homeless out from here, but unfortunately, we can only get them to the lower ticket hall," said Kubala. In this part, according to Kubala, the railways are short in dealing with homeless individuals; it is public space, where there are also entrances to the metro, and the railways have no authority there. "As far as I know, the Czech Police regularly conducts document checks there," added Kubala.
    Due to the reconstruction, people cannot use all access points to the platforms, and not all trains are stopping at the station. The widest northern underpass serves access to platforms five to seven, the middle underpass only leads to platforms one and two, which are utilized by trains only from one direction; the tracks from the other direction from Libeň have already been torn out.
    At the beginning of January, repairs began on platforms three and four, after which the first two should be addressed in June. "Trains really cannot run as they did in the previous timetables, and it is not possible to operate direct trains from Libeň across the Main Station to Smíchov and further to Plzeň," said Kubala.
    Timetables, however, account for the disruption. Trains from Vrané nad Vltavou terminate at the station Praha-Vršovice, other trains end at Smíchov and express trains have been rerouted from this line via Dejvice to Masaryk Station. "You will also no longer find direct trains from Moravia through Prague to Plzeň in the timetable because during the reconstruction, the tracks simply do not lead in this direction at the main station, and it is necessary to transfer between these directions. For the same reason, express trains from Hradec Králové to Prague-Smíchov no longer run, but to Vršovice," added Kubala.
    The Main Station building is being reconstructed by the company Grandi Stazioni. At this moment, it is focused on the northern part of the ticket hall. It intends to invest 850 million crowns into the repairs. The reconstruction began a year ago and will take at least another four years.
    The state organization Railway Infrastructure Administration is investing in the new platform. The construction is carried out by a consortium of companies Metrostav, Skanska, and Stavby silnic a železnic. In addition to the platforms, the track layout will also be modernized, for example. The repairs will cost 1.6 billion crowns and will end this December.