The Airport Approach Clears Its Appeal: Six Lanes, and a Road Bent Around a Runway

The planning decision for rebuilding the road that carries traffic to Václav Havel Airport now stands. The Ministry of Transport has dismissed objections lodged by three residents of Nebušice and Číčovice against the decision covering road I/7 between the Ruzyně and Aviatická interchanges, Zdopravy.cz reported on 8 September.

Prague city hall issued that decision, not yet final, in April this year. What the appellants challenged was not the road itself but what comes with it: the extensive relocation of high-pressure gas pipelines the scheme requires. They objected to the new route of those pipelines and also contested the conditions of land expropriation. Both sets of objections have now been rejected.

What is actually being built

The section is the main approach to the airport, and after rebuilding — partly on a new alignment — it becomes the opening stretch of the D7 motorway, with six lanes in total. It will also connect the motorway to the Prague Ring Road in the prepared section 518 Ruzyně – Suchdol, by way of the Přední Kopanina interchange.

As it stands, the road does not meet motorway parameters at all. Among other things it carries a signal-controlled pedestrian crossing, which causes frequent queues — a set of traffic lights on the road to the airport is the kind of detail that explains a project better than a cost figure does.

At the western end the scheme adjoins the rebuild of the Aviatická interchange, which is already under way. And the alignment is deflected where the airport's planned new runway is to go. The original line of I/7 between the point where it leaves the ring road and the Aviatická interchange will be abolished and the ground reclaimed.

The lengths are modest and worth stating precisely, because they are what distinguishes this from a motorway build. Within the Prague Ring Road construction the realignment runs 463 metres; within the Aviatická interchange construction the D7 will be modified over roughly 1,080 metres.

A junction of three schedules

Under ŘSD's current timetable, the building permit is expected in 2027, and the tender for a contractor is to be launched in the same year. Construction should begin a year after that, with completion in 2031. Preparation also involves coordination with the Praha–Kladno railway, which will run alongside the motorway.

That last point is the reason this small piece of road matters more than its length suggests. Four things are being built into the same corridor within roughly the same decade: the motorway approach, the Aviatická interchange, the ring road section towards Suchdol, and the Kladno railway with its airport branch. Each has its own promoter and its own schedule, and each constrains the others' geometry. A planning decision that survives appeal is the point at which one of those four stops being negotiable and starts being a fixed line the other three have to fit around.

For residents of Nebušice, the dismissal ends the route they had. For anyone travelling to the airport, nothing changes for years: the signal-controlled crossing stays until the rebuild starts, which on the current schedule is 2028 at the earliest. The permit that has just been confirmed buys the project its next stage, not its first spadeful.