From Prague in five hours: An interactive map helps plan your next city break

Chronotrains allows travelers to compare train travel in Czechia to distances they can cover in other countries.

Ioana Caloianu

Written by Ioana Caloianu Published on 28.09.2022 15:00:00 (updated on 28.09.2022) Reading time: 1 minute

Whimsical train travel throughout the Czech Republic and beyond is now easier thanks to an open-source, interactive map called Chronotrains that allows people to see how far they can go within a five-hour timeframe.

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Created by Paris-based developer Benjamin Td, the map shows isochrones, or areas accessible from a starting point within a certain timeframe, which ranges from 1 to 5 hours, and is color coded.

Chronotrains in a nutshell

  • A traveler starting out in Prague can reach most destinations in the Czech Republic in three to four hours.
  • Some areas bordering Germany, and Austria, can take longer than five hours.
  • Additionally, Dresden can be reached in about four hours, and Berlin in five hours.
  • Other destinations within reach in five hours are Regensburg, Nuremberg and Leipzig in Germany; Vienna and Linz in Austria; and Bratislava in Slovakia.

According to its website, the map’s inspiration is the Direkt Bahn Guru, the German railways’ map of direct train connections for cities in and beyond central Europe, which is also the source of the data used by Chronotrains.

The map, however, doesn’t include a number of countries from the Balkan and Baltic regions, which limits the scope of the comparison.

Another caveat is that the map is based on optimal travel times, which include 20-minutes interchanges, and transit between stations at a little over walking speed. However, real interchange times may differ in practice. 

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