A petition was created in Prague for the preservation of the railway bridge. The town hall wants it too
The Railway Administration (SŽ) presented a project some time ago, according to which only the lower part of the bridge with pillars is to be preserved and the current riveted structure is to be replaced by a new one. The preservation of the current form of the bridge is also advocated by the serving deputy mayor of Prague, Adam Scheinherr (Praha Sobě) and the management of Prague 5. SŽ ČTK is looking for a statement.
According to Richard Biegl, a member of the petition committee and chairman of the Club for Old Prague, the current form of the bridge is historically and technically valuable. “It’s not about complicating rail transport, it’s really about the bridge being a cultural monument from 2018,” he told ČTK today. He added that with older monuments, no one disputes that everything should be done to save them.
According to Biegl, representatives of the petition committee have already discussed with the Ministry of Transport Martin Kupka and the Minister of Culture Martin Baxa (both ODS). “The Minister of Transport told us that he would initiate something like a technological colloquium to take another look at the state of the bridge,” he said. According to him, Baxa then told the petitioners that in order to be able to remove the structure from the point of view of historic preservation, it is necessary to prove its irreparability. On Wednesday, the representatives of the petitioners are going to discuss this matter with the senators elected in the Prague districts in the Senate.
The future fate of the bridge has been discussed for a long time in the metropolis. Scheinherr has also been promoting the preservation of the current form for a long time. In the past, he commissioned a study at the Prague municipality, in which the Swiss bridge engineer and expert in riveted structures Eugen Brühwiler collaborated, and according to which it is possible. On the other hand, the Czech Klokner Institute of CTU previously recommended replacing the most with a new one.
SŽ announced an architectural competition for the next step, the results of which were announced last November. The winning proposal from the 2T engineering studio envisages removing the heritage-protected structure, replacing it with a new one and expanding it with a third track. A new train stop is to be built at Výton. According to the SŽ plan, the reconstruction should begin in 2026 and take 20 months to complete, the original one is to be used at least in part at another location.
The capital city is also demanding the extension of the third track, in order to increase the capacity of railway transport. Scheinherr, however, repeated in a letter to the councilors of Prague 5 that, in view of the studies carried out, we still consider it possible and appropriate to repair the most, i.e. completely replace only the bridge deck and replace only some surviving elements in the supporting structure. “From the point of view of transport, a new single-track bridge and a new railway stop should then be added,” wrote the acting mayor’s deputy. Last week, the council of Prague 5 also agreed with his opinion, which by resolution supported the solution in the form of reconstruction of the bridge and the addition of a new one with a third track.
The Výton railway bridge was put into operation in its original form on August 15, 1872. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, it was replaced by a bridge that spans the Vltava to this day. The current bridge consists of three trusses with a span of 69.9 meters, is 8.1 meters wide and 298.4 meters long. According to preservationists, the structure is a highly technical cultural monument in the exposed part of the Prague Monument Reserve.