For now, it is music of the relatively distant future, but if everything goes according to the plan of the current management of the capital, in a few years we could have a star in Prague that will connect both banks of the Vltava. Prague has now shown the winning architectural design, so for now we at least know what the connection between Bohnice and Podbaba should look like. It will be designed by architects from William Matthews Associates, who are behind a similar cable car in London.
“The design of William Matthews Associates, which also has experience with the London cable car, fits best into its surroundings between Podbaba, Troja and Bohnice. I hope that in a few years we will be able to ride in this elegant means of transport.” said Deputy Mayor for Transport Adam Scheinherr. A total of 23 applicants from nine European countries applied for the architectural competition, who applied to design the appearance of three stations and five supports of the planned cableways.
The planned cable car, which is to become part of the city’s public transport, will lead from Podbaba through Troja to Bohnice. At the two final ones, it will enable a transfer to the connecting transport station, while the Troja intermediate station is to be at the future new entrance to the zoo.
“The cable car is the fastest solution to connect Prague 6 with Prague 8 via Troja with sufficient capacity. People from Prague 6 and 8 have waited long enough for a proper connection,” explains Scheinherr. The existing variants combining metro and tram should take 40 minutes, the funicular can do it in fifteen. In the future, however, a tram connection is also expected here.
Visualization of the Podbaba side of the planned Prague cable car
Visualization of the Troja side of the planned Prague cable car
The shape of the cable car in Prague will be taken care of by architects from the London studio William Matthews Associates, which is also responsible for the designs of the London cable car and the modernization of London Bridge station. Recently, he has also been active in the Czech Republic. He works on the project of the new directorate of the Railway Administration in Prague and is also behind the design of the new bridge over the Svitava in Brno. In the final of the competition for the Prague cable car, the Czech duo of architects and Olgoj Chorchoj or the Austrian studio of the famous Norwegian studio Snøhetta defeated.
The planned length of the cable car route will be 2.24 kilometers and it should travel between stations at a speed of 6.5 meters per second. In total, people have almost seven minutes. One cabin can accommodate 35 passengers, and since there will be a total of seventeen of them, the cable car can transport two to four and a half thousand people in one direction per hour. Prague plans that the entire construction will cost approximately two billion crowns, but does not yet provide a more detailed time frame for the actual implementation.
“The cable car connects the Prague districts of Dejvice, Troja and Bohnice, spans the Vltava River and passes through one of the most important natural features of Prague, the Troja Basin,” said the authors of their proposal, which they developed in collaboration with Boele Architects and Expedition Engineering.
“The design subtly enters the fascinating environment by being designed in such a way that the roofs of this compact environment continuously transform and respond to the surrounding environment, as well as the design of simple pylons that elegantly integrate all the necessary technical infrastructure within a single form,” added British architects.
Visualization of the upcoming Prague cable car