D-Day for the D-line?

Residents in Prague’s north-eastern Žižkov area have been up in arms over reports that the long-planned D Metro line, will not after all be extended to the area. A Metro line can undoubtedly be good for local economies, bringing much-sought infrastructure to the harder-to-reach areas of Prague. But the plans have changed – so what exactly is going on?

At present, Prague’s Metro consists of three separate lines A,B and C. These have been gradually been extended outwards in recent years. At present, the top priority is to stretch the A line all the way from Dejvická, in the north-west part of Prague, to Ruzyně Airport. That project is set to begin next year, with the first stops, including one at Prague’s Motol hospital scheduled to open a number of years after that. But the Metro is not set to reach the airport itself for another decade. Less priority is being given to a completely new D-line, which has in fact been under consideration from as far back as the 1960s.

Maps of the proposed, albeit still unofficial route, have been available for some time. They appeared to suggest that the D-line would stretch from Modřany and Písnice in the south of Prague, all the way up to Žižkov. But now reports have emerged that the northern part has been truncated – and will instead veer into the centre of the city. Ondřej Pečený is a spokesperson for the Prague Transit Company. I asked him to explain the change:

“These plans are something to be really solved or finalized in 2020. I think that there are a lot of concepts for the transport system in Prague, and I think that now we are at the stage of assembling all the possibilities and factoring these against future growth plans in Prague.”

So what are the factors that are used to determine where the Prague Metro extends to?

“From the transportation point-of-view, for us it is much more important to involve the areas of Prague that don’t have access to mass transportation systems such as the Metro – areas such as those in the south of Prague like Lhotka and Libuš and Písnice and so on, which could be connected to the D-Line. Because if we talk about Žižkov, for example, there is already tram access there, and there is also a connection to the A-line. So there are already transport capacities in place in this region.”

Prague’s D-line won’t even begin construction until 2020, with an estimated completion another ten or fifteen years after that. So for today’s residents hoping to get a new Metro station on their doorsteps any time soon, the fact is that they are in for a long wait.