amount of transported goods, 91.6 million tons of goods were transported by
railway with an average transport distance of 159.2 km in 2014 (CSO 2015).
In 2014, 104 serious accidents happened on the railway in the Czech Republic,
resulting in 29 fatalities and 60 people seriously injured. Property damage was
151.7 million CZK (CSO 2015).
Railway Versus Road Infrastructure in the Czech Republic
The problem of animal mortality, often discussed in relation to road transport, is
only marginally known in the case of railways. There are only a few studies that
quantify the impact of railways on the mortality of wildlife (e.g. Andersen et al.
1991; Child 1983; Kušta et al. 2011; Kušta et al. 2014a, b; Paquet and Callaghan
1996; Wells et al. 1999).
Although railway infrastructure in the Czech Republic is significantly less
extensive compared to road infrastructure (Fig. 15.3), it is one of the densest in
Europe. The overall density of railways is 0.12 km/km
2 , while road density is
approximately six times higher (0.7 km/km
2 ) (for comparison, the density of railways in Poland is 0.071 km/km
2 , in Italy 0.065 km/km
2 , in Sweden 0.025 km/km
2 ,
and the average in the EU is 0.053 km/km
2 ). In the Czech Republic in many cases,
the main railway corridors are parallel with the main roads.
Fig. 15.2 Categorization of railways in the Czech Republic (location in Europe in inset) by
maximal speed
250
Z. Keken and T. Kušta