A Kilometre Without a Stop Ends on 7 October. Hodkovičky Gets the Tram Stop 164 Residents Asked For

On Wednesday 7 October a tram stop called Hodkovičky opens on the Modřany line, halving a gap of roughly a kilometre between the existing stops at Černý kůň and Belárie. Zdopravy.cz, which reports the date, says every tram line running towards Modřany will call there on request.

The stop sits beside the busy Modřany road feeder, at the junction of Modřanská with Československého exilu and Mezi vodami. Its purpose is narrower than a kilometre of track would suggest: it serves the apartment blocks that have gone up around it over the past few years, and nothing much else is within walking distance.

The petition named the buildings

Residents asked for the stop before it was designed. Their petition carried 164 signatures and argued from the arithmetic of the new housing — a rapidly growing number of apartment buildings and the people in them, measured against stops that were too far away.

The distance from the homes in the Zahálka and Hodkovičky Green developments to the existing stops is unsatisfactory; in the evening we do not feel safe on the walk back from the tram.

— from the text of the residents' petition, quoted by Zdopravy.cz

That is an unusually specific thing for a petition to say, and it is worth noting what it is actually about. The complaint is not journey time. It is the walk at the end of it, in the dark, along a road feeder — which is a fair description of what a kilometre gap between stops does to a new residential street that was laid out without one.

Late, and modest

The stop was originally due to open in the spring of this year. DPP began the tender last November, the completion deadline was set at 120 calendar days from handover of the site, and work was supposed to start at the end of last year. Total expected cost was around 27 million crowns excluding VAT.

The dimensions are ordinary and tell you what 27 million buys at a tram stop on an embanked road: platforms 67 metres long in each direction, 3.5 metres wide, with a boarding edge 24 centimetres high. Between the two platforms there is a four-metre crossing place over the tram track. Access is by a pair of staircases, with step-free access provided by two ramps at the main access stairs and by a crossing over Šífařská.

The bus half moved departments

The bus part of the stop, on Modřanská itself, is no longer DPP's to build. After a decision by the city's councillors it passed to Technická správa komunikací, and TSK's work there is slighter: the changes are to road markings only. Bus 190 is to call on Modřanská in future.

The consequence on the road is the part worth watching. The stops will narrow Modřanská, and a signalised pedestrian crossing is to be built with a central refuge because of the volume of traffic. A road feeder built for through movement is being given a stopping place, a narrower carriageway and a set of lights, which is the trade a stop of this kind always involves and the reason it took a petition to get one.

What Zdopravy does not report is any explanation from DPP for the six-month slip between the intended spring opening and 7 October.