The Ring Road's Biggest Noise Bund Is Made of Soil That Will Not Hold

The largest earthwork on the Prague ring road is not a bridge or a tunnel. It is a bund of soil at the Dubeč junction, between 45 and 160 metres wide at the base and at least ten metres above the adjacent slip road, built to keep motorway noise out of Běchovice. ŘSD has a problem with it: the material it is meant to be made of does not behave the way the design assumed. Zdopravy.cz reported the difficulty on 6 September.

The bund was doing two jobs at once, and that is what makes this awkward. It shields the Dubeč grade-separated junction from the housing at Běchovice, and it was also where most of the surplus soil from the entire D1-to-Běchovice section was going to end up, so that it would not have to be carted away.

The design documentation for tendering the works assumed the use of all material, among other places in every part of the protective bunds — both the longitudinal ones along the D0 alignment and the large bund at Běchovice. On the basis of the material and rock actually found, and its behaviour once excavated and placed, particularly in greater moisture, the technical solution in the reinforced parts of the bunds has to be adjusted so that the bunds are stable and meet all required parameters.

— Luděk Hubáček, ŘSD communications department

Excavated in the rain, the spoil makes unstable mud. Hubáček told Zdopravy.cz the objective remains not to haul material off the site and to use it practically in full, which is the most economical solution.

Ten metres against four

Read against the rest of the scheme, the scale of this one structure explains why the soil question is not a detail. The next planned bund, at the Říčany junction, will be only four metres high; gabion walls and noise barriers elsewhere on the section top out at six. The Běchovice bund is more than twice anything else on the route.

It also has an owner waiting for it. Prague City Hall and ŘSD agreed some time ago that ŘSD would build the bund on city land and then transfer it to Prague, after which the city would raise it further and plant it with trees.

The section is already late

The Běchovice–D1 stretch has been under construction since December 2024. It was originally to open in December 2027; ŘSD now gives the second half of 2028.

Radek Mátl, ŘSD's director general, used his podcast to answer drivers who say little is visibly happening on site.

Construction is very intensive. Tunnels are being built, bridges, an enormous quantity of soil is being moved. Anyone driving past sees it with their own eyes.

— Radek Mátl, director general of ŘSD

The viaducts and tunnels, he said, are being built to schedule. On the bunds, talks with the contractors are running: "We are already close to an agreement, so that construction can continue smoothly." Mátl added that the longitudinal bunds along the alignment also need reinforcing, and a technical solution that guarantees no future trouble with them.

The bunds are there to protect all the residents around the D0 from noise. At the same time the advantage is that we put all the soil found along the alignment there, so we do not have to haul it away from the site.

— Radek Mátl

The junction the bund will screen is a significant piece of road in its own right. Dubeč will connect the new section to the Štěrboholská radiála and to the existing ring from Černý Most, and will join the ring to the four-lane I/12 trunk road that forms the Úvaly bypass. It is to have eight new ramps — three single-lane loops and two two-lane.