Student Agency
Student Agency is a private, Czech long-distance bus and rail transport company founded in 1996 and based in Brno . The company offers cross-border regional and long-distance bus connections between the Czech Republic , Slovakia and Austria and has also been active in cross-border rail transport with its subsidiary Regiojet since 2009 . Since 2016, all trains and buses have been running under the common Regiojet brand .
In 2012 the company's bus fleet comprised 130 vehicles, employed 1,600 people and carried around five million passengers a year. The company, which continues to expand, is aiming for annual passenger numbers of 15 to 20 million by expanding on the railways.
history
The company's beginnings go back to 1993, when Radim Jančura, a graduate of the Technical University of Brno , set up an agency for arranging au-pair trips. He had discovered a niche in the market and immediately filled it. The first buses were purchased to take students to Germany, France and Great Britain. This was finally followed in 1996 by the establishment of the Student Agency as a company with the first employees.
In 2004 Student Agency started its first bus service with the Prague – Brno route. The entry into the rail business was prepared from 2009.
Due to the outdated state rail and bus infrastructure, which has hardly been modernized since the fall of the Wall , company founder Jančura is extremely popular with the development of a modern bus and train fleet in the Czech Republic.
Long-distance bus transport
Starting with the Prague – Brno connection in 2004, Student Agency now connects 30 other Czech cities with regular buses. In the course of time, long-distance bus connections were added, which now include 14 European countries. Since 2016, all buses have been running under the common Regiojet brand .
Railway lines
In 2009, Student Agency entered the rail business with the establishment of Regiojet . Since September 2011 the line from Prague to Havířov via Ostrava has been operated. According to the journal Eisenbahn-Revue International , Regiojet is engaged in a "ruinous price war" with the state railway České dráhy (ČD) and the private railway company Leo Express on this section .
As the first line outside of the Czech Republic, the Bratislava - Komárno regional line in Slovakia was added to the timetable in March 2012 , after the company won a tender in January 2011 against the Slovak State Railways , which ended their monopoly era.
The route Bratislava - Žilina - Košice in Slovakia was operated from December 2014 to January 31, 2017 .
With the timetable change on December 11, 2016, Regiojet expanded its route network from Prague via Brno to Bratislava ( Staré Město ). Since December 10th, 2017, Regiojet and the Austrian railway company Graz-Köflacher-Bahn have been connecting Prague with Vienna every day.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c brandeins: Student Agency - The Yellow Plague , Edition 07/2012 (accessed on November 23, 2017)
- ↑ a b c regiojet.de: Our story (accessed on November 23, 2017)
- ^ Price war in the Czech Republic. Eisenbahn-Revue International 4/2013, p. 186
- ^ Petit Press as: RegioJet to leave the Bratislava-Košice route . In: spectator.sme.sk . ( sme.sk [accessed March 22, 2017]).
- ↑ diepresse.com: From 15 euros: Czech private railway runs daily between Vienna and Prague , November 20, 2011