By train from Prague to Dresden? Negotiations with farmers are said to take years
Minister of Transport and Industry and Trade Karel Havlíček (for YES) said this today. According to him, the problem is not now the part of the corridor that is to lead through the Elbe, but in the vicinity of Ústí nad Labem, he added. The state needed to start building a corridor in 2027.
Today, the Minister met with his Saxon counterpart Martin Dulig (SPD) and representatives of the European Commission about future corridors and their role in traveling between the Czech Republic, Germany and Austria. In Germany, according to Dulig, there is less of a problem with farmers along the corridor, because a large part of it is supposed to run underground.
According to Havlíček, by the end of this decade, part of the corridor in the Elbe, two thirds of the corridor between Prague and Brno or part of the corridor between Ostrava and the Moravian Gate could be completed. According to him, the financing of the line is currently being addressed, where European resources could help.
This year, farmers complained in advance that the state had little communication with them about the corridors. According to the then statement of the chairman of the Agricultural Union of the Czech Republic Martin Pýcha, the construction of the corridor should take over over 3,300 hectares of fertile land and there is a risk that the corridor affects the hydrological balance of the Vrchlice river basin, which is a source of drinking water for 60,000 inhabitants. The planned northern variant of the line between Prague and Brno leads five times from the waterworks, so it does not even encroach on the protection zone, said František Jemelka, a spokesman for the Ministry of Transport. According to him, the state will try to communicate more with farmers, which, however, has recently been due to coronavirus.
In July, the Railway Administration (SŽ) came up with a new variant of the high-speed line from Prague to Dresden with a stop in Ústí nad Labem, which would avoid part of the inhabited area in the Litoměřice region. Now the bodies in question are operating with three variants, if it is not possible to achieve any of them, the operation to return SŽ to the original variant, which will stop in Ústí nad Labem, does not count, said the regional governor Jan Schiller (ANO).
According to Havlíček, the state currently contributes 55 billion crowns a year to the railways, which is 30 percent more than two years ago. The government then approved in September that the European ETCS signaling system should be gradually built on around 4,800 kilometers of domestic lines over the next ten years. The state will give about 47 billion crowns, another 15 billion will be spent on equipping trains with the same system. In the next 20 years, the system should go around 100 billion crowns and ETCS should appear in various forms on smaller lines in the Czech Republic. The state also wants to use money from European funds for this.
It is estimated that high-speed trains in the Czech Republic could use over 130,000 passengers a day due to their use. The state promises a significant reduction in travel time from high-speed lines.