Prague – The car lobby is rolling “emhads”. Car transit through the center is evil
Cans in the capital want to preserve a hard-to-tolerate, unhealthy, suffocating condition that is harmful. Error. Waiting “once both Prague circuits are ready” is like waiting for Godot. Prague remains a can of exhaust gases.
Prague, a city “a hundred years behind the monkeys”, crowded with cars and tourists. A city where the homeland feels distressed, where housing is infernally expensive, but at the same time you have the opportunity to get a job. The city where the president fortified the castle, so the locals can’t go through unless they submit to control.
An absurd city where it is difficult to walk (with the excuse of a day of brutally overcrowded pedestrian zones occupied by groups with selfie poles) and where it is very difficult to ride a bike. Will it ever change?
Apart from housing, road transport is undoubtedly the biggest pain. People who use public transport praise themselves in general. Undoubtedly, it is cheap and works well, if you think of the critical places where car convoys block trams and buses.
An interesting “experiment” has now ended in the center of the capital. Due to repairs (thanks to repairs), Smetana’s embankment and Malá Strana were partially closed to cars. On the Smetana embankment, the tracks were reconstructed and the cubes were changed, traffic was led to Malá Strana, where cars and trams ran: hell, traffic jams. Then the Lesser Town was closed to cars so that trams would not get stuck in convoys. Later, concrete dried on the Smetana embankment, nothing went there. From November 11 to 17, city traffic ran on both banks, cars on either side.
So it was not an attempt by both banks “just like that”, but the necessary interventions due to reconstructions. Reaction? In general, for residents, the closure of road transport is a relief (unsurprisingly), on the contrary, drivers accustomed to driving here are stuck on detours in convoys and swear.
According to a report by Deputy Mayor for Transport Adam Scheinherr (for the Prague civic association himself): “The changed transport regime in Malá Strana and Smetana’s embankment has significantly helped tram traffic and the flow of connecting bus lines has also improved.”
Quite logically, therefore, blocking people has benefited public transport. Smetanovo nábřeží and Malá Strana are key points of Prague’s tram traffic, with almost a third of all tram lines in Prague running here.
Cars? Again from Deputy Scheinherr’s report: “omezení Traffic restrictions affect road traffic, which affects critical sections of the communication network, but it cannot be said that these traffic restrictions cause significant traffic complications.”
Simply put, car closures are very convenient for public transport and not fatally disadvantageous for car drivers. However, they are very annoying.
Scheinherr versus Pospíšil
So we have a car lobby and passengers plus public transport drivers, but not a public transport lobby. It is quite understandable that the “emhads” have no lobby (for example, the manufacturers of trams and buses do not stand behind them), they simply ride the “sock” and no lobby will stop them. Until now, perhaps Prague to itself, pirates and STAN.
But it is not just the operation itself, it is also about the atmosphere. Prague measured (more precisely the mobile equipment of the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute measured) air pollution. The data will be evaluated, but only a fool would expect that the air quality will not improve with the closing of the entrance. It will definitely improve. At the same time, let us add that the air quality in the center of Prague is the second worst in the country, it has a direct negative impact on the health of Praguers.
The deadline for cars on both banks of the Vltava ended on November 18, and the brief calm there went out. What’s next? Adam Scheinherr on Facebook writes: “A permanent deadline is not yet politically possible, but we will seek support for it within the coalition on the basis of expert opinions, facts and figures. Shading old Prague from heavy car traffic is not an ideology or aesthetic invention. “The center without transit traffic is an idea that political parties on the right have been leaning towards in Prague since the late 1990s. We are clearly in favor of this idea – and with us the hard data.”
It sounds great, only the whole Prague coalition will not agree on that yet, Jiří Pospíšil, TOP 09 Prague, is against. Reason? “The City Circuit is not completed.” – In the near future, Prague will probably enforce a partial restriction on the entry of cars to the mentioned places, ie they do not transit entry only for cars that do not pass. They will have to go back the same way. Which probably helped in part.
The second option is a toll, a toll entrance, but this seems even more distant than non-transit entrances. Residents living in cars in flooded areas will welcome any restrictions. Of course, the entry will remain allowed for them, but at least the transit should end in the center as soon as possible.
It is surprising that the coalition does not agree on such trivial matters (TOP 09, Pospíšil about the permanent deadline: “We must not allow it”), that it has not been enforced long ago, the hydrometeorological and the resulting health data speak for themselves. But it is also a “feeling of home”, which one can hardly have when one cannot go to the street, when one cannot open a window, when one can breathe poorly.
A typical moment: traffic restrictions want (as Klaus senior would say) “progressives”, progressives. Conservatives oppose it. So the cans want to preserve ten hard-to-tolerate, unhealthy, suffocating states that are harmful. Error. Waiting “once both Prague circuits are ready” is like waiting for Godot. Prague remains a can of exhaust gases.