It Will Be More Expensive! Prague Increases Fines to Czk 1500
The campaign against stowaways in Prague’s public transport continues. The Transport Company has decided to increase the cost of fines for those who ticket inspectors catch. If you pay on the spot, the fine remains the same – CZK 800, but unpaid fines climb up to nearly CZK 1500!
Travelling without a ticket can be really expensive. Until today, passengers caught in Prague public transport paid the ticket inspector CZK 800 on the spot and CZK 1000 later at the checkout of the Transport Company if the fine is not paid within a given time. Now, however, this rate is being increased, with effect from 1 January 2014.
“By the increased rate, we want to prevent the increasing number of stowaways. We determined the effective date because… the volume of traffic is very challenging,” said councilman Jiří Pařízek to Czech News Agency, with the fact that if the payment is made on the spot, the Transport Company will get more money.
The Transport Company can sell unpaid fines to debt collection companies, but this is only up to 25 percent of the value under the law. “[A] lower fine when paying on the spot or at the supplementary checkout has its importance, as this reduced surcharge is the whole income of the Transport Company, whereas if [the] surcharge is collected by the judicial process that happens through the sale of receivables, the carrier receives only 25 percent of imposed surcharge.” Prague City Hall confirms this fact.
During only the first half of this year, inspectors have caught 127,871 stowaways and handed out fines in the amount of 52 million. But in fact, the Prague Transport Company annually transports more than a billion passengers. Last year inspectors handed out 280,139 fines, the amount of which was about CZK 132,600,000.
