Hradčanská Shuts on 16 January for Almost a Year — and Reopens Without a Lift

Hradčanská metro station on line A will close completely — platform, vestibule and the underpass beneath it — from Saturday 16 January 2027. DPP announced the date on 2 November, the same day it said preparatory work had begun. Trains will run through the station at reduced speed, and DPP expects to reopen it, fully modernised, towards the end of 2027.

The contract is held by a consortium of Metrostav CZ and Geosan Group, at 1.134 billion crowns excluding VAT.

What happens before January, and after

Until about mid-January the station stays open while the contractors work in local cordons on every level, public and non-public. The cladding is already coming off the platform pillars, the central nave and the walls behind the tracks; ceilings are being taken down in the vestibule, redundant cable stripped out and temporary power run in for the main phase. Lukáš Radil, director of civil-engineering operations at Metrostav CZ, said this first stage is the awkward one:

"Náročná je také úvodní etapa předstihových prací, kdy musíme veškeré činnosti přizpůsobit běžnému provozu metra a pohybu cestujících. Pracovat tak můžeme pouze od půlnoci do tří hodin ráno."

— Lukáš Radil, director of civil-engineering operations, Metrostav CZ

Once the station is shut, the three-flight escalators and their machine room come out first. In the escalator tunnel the original reinforced-concrete supports, the side service stairs and the failing slab between the technical and cable spaces are all removed and rebuilt. Leaks and linings are treated on every level; drainage, cable trays, all wiring and ventilation are replaced; the station's distribution substation is rebuilt. Suspended lights give way to LED fittings set into the cladding, between the anodised aluminium panels, which DPP intends to refurbish rather than replace wherever it can. Stone floors and walls are to be cleaned and patched to match.

In the underpass, four shop units are to be removed and the wall of artistic reliefs hidden behind them restored. The toilets are rebuilt, a new passenger information system goes in, and tactile guide lines and audio beacons for blind and partially sighted passengers are added to the specification of the SONS, the national blind association.

The case for doing all of it at once was made by Daniel Veverka, who heads DPP's metro investment department: the station opened in 1978 and has never been comprehensively rebuilt. The worst spots were repaired and the escalators replaced thirty years ago, and those, too, are now at the end of their life, and some of the structures, he said, are v havarijním stavu — in an emergency state. DPP does not intend to change the layout.

Two stations missing from line A

Hradčanská's closure had already been pushed from this summer to January precisely so that line A would not lose two stations at once while Flora was being rebuilt. That plan did not survive August, when DPP found the ceiling beams over Flora's platform far worse than expected and moved its reopening to the end of February. With Hradčanská now fixed for 16 January, trains will pass through both stations without stopping for a stretch Zdopravy.cz puts at roughly a month. DPP's release does not mention the overlap. Taking the two dates DPP has given, it runs about six weeks.

For the Hradčanská closure itself, Zdopravy.cz reports that tram lines in Praha 6 will be strengthened and that passengers can also use trains from the nearby Praha-Dejvice station. DPP's release does not set out the replacement service.

The lift that is not in the contract

The rebuilt station will still not be step-free. Praha 6 has criticised that before, Zdopravy.cz notes, and it means Hradčanská will have to close again at some point. DPP's answer is that step-free access will be a separate investment, prepared together with Správa železnic and the modernisation of the Prague–Kladno railway. The intent is to link the metro station by lifts, across several levels, to a new underground Praha-Dejvice railway station.

That station is still being designed. According to Zdopravy.cz, the section of the line it sits on has neither a planning permit nor a start date, and for a long time it was unclear whether a connection to the metro would be possible at all. DPP chose not to wait for it. The rebuild also replaces Hradčanská's escalators from 1996, which Zdopravy.cz describes as the oldest of the "non-Soviet" escalators in the Prague metro.

Read together, the two halves of the announcement sit uneasily. The rebuild is presented as laying the technical groundwork for step-free access — so Jaromír Beránek, first deputy mayor for transport, put it in DPP's release. But the lift depends on a railway project that has not cleared its first permit, so the station will spend most of 2027 closed and come back with escalators as its only way down, as now.