Prague, March 2 (CTK) – One in three Czech families, mainly seniors in small one-family houses and young people living in prefabs in large towns, do not have any car, daily Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) writes yesterday, referring to statistics.
“Almost 35 percent of households in the Czech Republic do not use any car. Twenty-two percent of them live in one-family houses and 44 percent in blocks of flats,” Czech Statistical Office (CSU) spokeswoman Petra Bacova told MfD.
Though more than five million cars are registered in the Czech Republic with a population of 10.5 million, families only use 3.4 million of them, according to the CSU.
This total figure does not include the company cars if the employees do not use them for private purposes. The statistics focused on how many cars, either private or company ones, families really use, CSU head Iva Ritschelova said.
The group of the households without a car can be simply divided into the elderly from one-family houses who do not drive any more and the young from prefab blocks of flats who do not drive yet. Pensioners make up 56 precent of people without a car living in one-family houses, MfD writes.
In blocks of flats, mainly singles and families with the monthly net income of up to 26,000 crowns do not have a car, said Radek Matejka, director of the CSU’s section of industry, building and energy sectors statistics.
The highest number of households that do not use a car live in Prague (44 percent), where the public transport network is advanced, while traffic jams are frequent and parking problematic or expensive, followed by inhabitants of northern Bohemia (43 percent).
“The highest unemployment in the country is in north Bohemia, about 8 percent [national average was about 4 percent last year]. This is probably why fewer people than elsewhere use a car there,” Matejka told MfD.
If inhabitants of north Bohemia commute to work, they probably take a train or a bus, he added.
On the contrary, the lowest number of families without a car is registered in the Central Bohemia region (24.9 percent). Moreover, people from this region drive the most. They cover 9,871 kilometres on the roads a year on average, while the national average is 1,645 kilometres lower.
“Many people from Central Bohemia drive to Prague for work daily,” Matejka said.
Out of 4.3 million households in the Czech Republic, 526,000 of have two or more cars. Most of them live in one-family houses where one in four families use several cars, while only 11 percent of the families from prefabs have more than one car, MfD writes.
($1=25.654 crowns)
