South Bohemia – the story doesn’t end
As a partner of RUMOBIL project JIKORD had an opportunity to implement a new bus line in rural area 30 km south from regional city of České Budějovice. JIKORD team and included stakeholders planned and connected Kaplice railway (part of TENT-T rail network connection Linz with Prague) with surrounding settlement and villages. Line enabled better connection with bigger cities to local inhabitant, in the other hand opened the nature area to tourism. From evaluation of operation the most important information was that we pull 22 new passengers per day (10 % increase of number of passengers in area), the passengers were mainly tourist.
Together with relevant stakeholders and politicians representative JIKORD planned the tourist connections based on the knowledge, experiences and the result of previous RUMOBIL pilot line. This step was supported by the decision of the Council of South Bohemia region to financing the operation and including it to public service obligation.
Last weekend during the tourist festival TRAVELFEST in České Budějovice together with destination management organisation in area a new connection was introduced to large public. The reaction of public was highly positive.
South Bohemia region is one of the most visited region in Czechia with rich nature and cultural tradition and one of identified problem in tourist strategy is lack of touristic public transport. RUMOBIL helped show that people have interest about this kind of transport, there existing demand and region showed will to start discuss about it. It may seem that one line is only small stone, but let’s hope that it can start something bugger action. What is positive that although the RUMOBIL ends here, the idea and implementation of pilot line will continue.
