Prague's Election Winner Wants the Annual Pass at 4,750 Crowns and a Toll Inside the City Ring

STAN's new group of councillors met for the first time on Sunday evening, after the movement took 23.17 percent of the vote and 17 seats to win the municipal election in the capital. Petr Hlaváček — an architect and urbanist who has spent the outgoing term as deputy mayor for territorial development, and the movement's candidate leader — used a briefing to set out what he intends to carry into coalition talks. Zdopravy.cz reported it on 12 October. Two of the three things he named cost drivers and passengers money, and the third decides who in the new council gets to pursue them.

3,650 crowns, and the number from before 2015

Prague's annual coupon costs 3,650 crowns. Hlaváček wants it back at 4,750 — the price it carried until 2015. At today's figure, an annual subscriber pays ten crowns a day for the whole network.

The rise has been blocked inside the outgoing coalition, and the blockage was a trade rather than a refusal. The Pirates made any increase in long-term coupons conditional on parking charges going up and the parking system being reformed; ODS would not accept that half. What survived last year's considerable coalition disputes was a rise in single tickets alone, which left the coupons where they were.

That is why Zdopravy.cz treats this part of the programme as the part that will move fast. The outlet notes that in its own survey both Tomáš Portlík, who leads Prague's ODS, and Adam Scheinherr of Praha Sobě argued that fares have to go up. Hlaváček also confirmed at the briefing that he wants parking to cost more, which removes the condition the Pirates had attached.

A toll that needs its own law

The second item is a charge for entering the central part of the city, with the boundary drawn at the inner City Ring Road. Hlaváček says preparation should begin in the coming term.

Prague has been here before and lost. Zdeněk Hřib, as deputy mayor for transport, and his successor Jaromír Beránek both sought a charge covering at least Smetanovo nábřeží and Malá Strana, and the interior ministry refused it. The reasoning was jurisdictional rather than political: that scheme was aimed at transit traffic, and on the ministry's reading a municipality charging transit would be imitating the state toll system, which is not within the competence of local self-government.

Charging destination traffic inside the ring is the version the state does not object to — but it requires a special law, which Hlaváček says has already begun to be drafted. He says residents of the charged area would not be affected by it.

There is also an irony in the timing. The original environmental opinion for completing the ring in its north-eastern section, Pelc-Tyrolka to Štěrboholy, made a central toll a condition of the road. The recent update of those environmental conditions dropped the obligation. The charge is now something the city would have to choose rather than something the road requires of it — and the road itself runs far beyond this electoral term: the project is only now entering more detailed geotechnical surveys, construction is to start in 2029, and the date for full operation has slipped to 2042.

The post that decides whether any of it happens

Hlaváček did not list transport among the areas STAN wants to keep for itself, so the deputy mayor for transport will probably go to a coalition partner. The arithmetic of who that might be is not comfortable. SPOLU, the ODS and TOP 09 coalition, made transport its main campaign theme but has long lacked an expert in it. Praha Sobě is the second possibility, and its leader Adam Scheinherr held the post before and has made no secret of wanting it back. Hlaváček named the Pirates as a third party for the talks, though Zdopravy.cz judges their place in the city government the least likely of the three after heavy losses of seats, whatever the record of the outgoing deputy Jaromír Beránek.

Read together, the three items are one bargain rather than three promises: the fare rise is what the next coalition can deliver quickly, the parking reform is what the last one could not agree, and the toll is a law somebody else has to pass first.