Station Buildings of Mixed or Passenger Railway Stations – the Transformation of their Role in the 21st Century
Abstract: Station buildings are buildings in the area of railway stations intended for the provision of transport and related services (check-in, information, catering, etc.) to passengers and carriers (rail customers in freight transport) and so far, usually also associated with areas for railway traffic control and other railway infrastructure manager’s activities. The major part of the station buildings in the Czech Republic was built during the construction of the relevant railway lines, usually in the second half of the 19th century. Therefore, disposition and size of the railway buildings corresponded to – on the one hand – the high share of human labour in the railway traffic control and – on the other hand – the high demands of passengers for services directly related to their carriage by rail transport, further enhanced by the three carriage classes. The role of rail transport was changing in Europe especially at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries (in the western part earlier, in the postsocialist later). There was a massive deployment of modern railway control systems and centralized traffic control, and simultaneously, the types and methods of buying tickets and the regularity of commuting are changing, and interchanging with other modes of transport is more frequent. This corresponds to completely different demands on the equipment, disposition and size of station buildings, which also results from property and organizational changes in rail transport. Thus, what will be the development in the field of tasks that station buildings have to perform from the time of the first railway lines to the present and in the future, and how the requirements for their disposition, size and architectural design corresponded/correspond will be the content of the first large chapter of the paper. It will be possible to determine from the second part of the paper how the Czech Republic and neighbouring countries, especially Germany, are trying to deal with this area. One of the main methodological tools for planning the use and modification of station buildings in the Czech Republic is the Concept of Passenger Station Management. The last main part of the paper consists of a discussion and comments on the Concept.
