Until last summer, most of the cars that went from Prague’s Suchdol and neighboring villages to Prague’s Hanspaulka residential district passed through here. But then concrete roadblocks appeared in the area in front of the International Hotel, which still forces drivers to make a neck-breaking detour. According to officials from Prague 6, permanently.
“One engineer couldn’t come up with this, it had to be at least two,” says Rostislav Srb from Roztok u Prahy. Although he only goes to the capital by car a few times a month, the concrete blocks crossing the once busy road still took him by surprise. “I was driving down memory lane and almost ran into them,” he admits.
Since then, the place has changed only slightly, a small parking lot was created in front of the roadblocks. The whole place seems bizarre, as if the architecture of the building in the style of socialist realism found a new ally in the space in front of the hotel.
Photo: Aktuálně.cz
“It’s definitely a complication, it’s very confusing there,” says Pavel Chládek from Únětice, who takes his daughter to school in Prague 6. It never occurred to him that the complication was created on purpose so that he would drive elsewhere.
“The goal was to limit the amount of transit traffic on the local road intended for the service of individual properties,” Marek Zeman, press spokesman for the Prague 6 Municipal District Office, told the editorial staff of Aktuálně.cz. With this measure, traffic should return to the wider roads of the Yugoslav Partisans and Zelená, the authority promises.
But precisely at the crossing of these two streets, a traffic light is waiting for the driver, which will delay them. “Anyone who only knows a little about it will definitely not go here,” says Rostislav Srb.
The solution, which, according to Marko Zeman, was preceded by an extensive discussion by the transport commission, was finally approved unanimously. It came about based on complaints from local residents who were bothered by transit traffic. According to Zeman, the comparison of data from the census radar proves that it is the latter that prevails in the place. In the direction of Hanspaulka, 65,000 cars passed through Koulová Street every day, and that was only in one direction. However, most of them do not go to the residential area, but try to bypass the eternally congested Vítězná náměstí.
However, all these cars are now congesting traffic in the already congested street of the Yugoslav Partisans. The neuralgic point is precisely the crossing with Čínská street, after which drivers now return to Koulava street. Two traffic lanes converge here, there is a pedestrian crossing and a bus stop, drivers turning left must give priority to trams.
At the same time, a large number of drivers ignore the narrowing of the road and, when turning right, drive over the slanted lanes, which are not allowed to enter. They thus cross the path of cars turning according to the regulations, whose drivers believe that no one can threaten them from the right. Within five minutes, the Aktuálně.cz editors counted fifty traffic violations.
Probably only thanks to the prudence of the drivers there are not an excessive number of car accidents. “Last year, we registered four traffic accidents in the immediate vicinity of the incriminated location, one of which could correspond to the mentioned cause,” says David Rovenský from the Traffic Engineering Department of the Police of the Czech Republic, adding that the site still needs to be modified.
In fact, the damming of Koula Street is still in the phase of trial operation, which was supposed to end at the end of last year. But as Marek Zeman says, the final solution has a slippage. “At the moment, an update of the project, which reflects the relevant comments from cyclists, is starting to be discussed.”
While cyclists will be able to turn directly onto Koulava street after the final modification, nothing will change for car drivers. Road retarders will be added only at the narrowing of Yugoslav Partisans Street, and concrete city blocks will be replaced by flexible plastic posts.
According to the architect Petr Benedikt, even such a modification will not look much better. “The area in front of the International Hotel looks like a square, but in reality it’s just a parking lot with a minimal amount of greenery. And the fact that someone fences off the street with bollards only underlines the urban helplessness of the whole place,” thinks the architect.
At the same time, he believes that there is no simple transport solution for the given area. “Hopefully, if it were possible to get part of the traffic underground. Or if the circuit with the Vltava bridge was completed, so that all cars from the northwestern edge of Prague would not necessarily meet at Vítězné náměstí,” concludes Petr Benedikt.
