The K Prádelně Bridge Over the Botič Comes Down on 1 September, and a Wider One Replaces It

The road bridge carrying K Prádelně over the Botič will be demolished from 1 September and replaced by a new structure, with the street fully closed on both sides until 15 December. Prague 10 published the schedule on 28 August. The investor is Technická správa komunikací hl. m. Prahy; the contractor is BM Constructions spol. s r.o.

The replacement is not a repair. The existing bridge is being removed outright.

What is being built

The new bridge is a single-span structure, designed as a monolithic frame founded on micropiles. Prague 10 says it will be wider than the one it replaces, and will have greater capacity in flood conditions.

That second point is the one that explains the job. The Botič is the watercourse that does the damage in this part of the city when it rises, and a bridge deck sitting low over a constricted channel is a place where water backs up. The works accordingly include reshaping the bed of the Botič in the space beneath the bridge, alongside the structure itself.

The rest of the scope is the ordinary accompaniment of a bridge replacement: adjustments to the adjoining sections of road, relocation of the utility networks affected, drainage, cornices and bridge railings.

The programme runs from 1 September to 15 December 2026. Prague 10 notes that the dates include a time reserve — three and a half months for a small single-span bridge is a schedule with slack written into it rather than a tight one.

The closure is wider than the bridge

The full closure of K Prádelně on both sides of the bridge is the obvious part. The less obvious part is what happens on the pond dam nearby.

Construction machinery and deliveries have to reach the site along the narrow carriageway on the dam. Because of that, and explicitly to keep them apart from people, pedestrians are barred and cyclists may not ride through on the dam in K Vodě, in the section between Na Lávce and K Prádelně.

Prague 10 sets out the ways around it:

• On foot to the church and the pond — via the car park of the Hamr sports complex, entering opposite the building at Záběhlická 1728/75, and across the pedestrian footbridge.
• By bike — around the southern side of the pond, past the Hamerský sklípek.

Why it matters beyond Záběhlice

A district closure notice is usually local administration. This one is a piece of city infrastructure being replaced rather than patched, by the city's road authority, with a named contractor and a stated gain in flood capacity — and the reason to record it is that the flood argument outlives the closure.

What the district's account does not give is a price. There is no cost figure for the demolition and rebuild, no indication of how the contract was awarded, and no statement of the load capacity or span of either the old bridge or the new one. Nor does it say what condition the existing structure was in, which is the usual reason a bridge is replaced outright rather than strengthened. Those are the figures that would let a reader judge whether three and a half months and a full closure are proportionate, and they are worth asking TSK for.