A Year of Closures at Masaryk Station, Narrowed by One Objection

The Office for the Protection of Competition (ÚOHS) has approved the plan of railway operating restrictions for 2027 that Správa železnic submitted in July. It is the document that fixes, a year ahead, where the Czech network will be shut for repairs and modernisation and for how long. The decision, posted on the office's notice board, is not yet final — carriers still have time to file a rozklad against it. Zdopravy.cz reported the approval.

For Prague the consequential passage is the approach to the centre. The office names the restrictions in the Praha-Libeň – Praha-Holešovice – Masarykovo nádraží area as key for both suburban and long-distance trains getting into the city, which is another way of saying that the two termini on the eastern side of the centre cannot be worked on quietly.

What an objection is worth at this stage

The one substantive change the published decision records at Masaryk station came from ROPID, which orders public transport rather than running it. Správa železnic had originally proposed closures in the station running from 1 January to 11 December 2027 — 345 days. ROPID's comment was that the scope as drawn would restrict the operating possibilities of the Masaryk node unnecessarily. Správa železnic accepted the point and amended the plan so that tracks 8 and 9 — which the office calls important — become usable from September 2027.

That is the whole of what the objection won: not a shorter closure, a narrower one, and only in the last quarter of the year. It is worth setting against what the approval procedure actually tests. Under the Railways Act the office checks whether closures are proposed only to the extent necessary, for no longer than necessary, and for reasons connected with maintenance, repairs or construction on the infrastructure. It found that the planned restrictions did not exceed a reasonable degree given the scale and significance of the work.

The comments that came in from carriers, transport authorities and other affected parties were, in most cases, dealt with either by amending the draft or by a promise of further coordination in the medium-term planning that follows. Where Správa železnic could not meet a carrier's request, the office considered its position sufficiently justified on technical and operational grounds.

ÚOHS also used the decision to say the process has got easier.

Je potěšující, že se v posledních letech podařilo navázat konstruktivní dialog mezi Správou železnic a dopravci a ke schvalování výluk dochází na základě oboustranného jednání a kompromisu.

— Petr Solský, vice-chairman, Office for the Protection of Competition

The other heavy one runs to Prague too

The closure the office singles out as most significant is not in the city but on a line into it: the Brno – Tišnov – Havlíčkův Brod – Praha corridor, one of the key northern connections out of Brno and a significant freight route onward to Austria or central Bohemia. A bridge repair between Vlkov u Tišnova and Řikonín stops traffic for 21 days, from 26 July to 15 August 2027, and Správa železnic deliberately overlapped it with a halt at Tišnov from 2 to 15 August. One closure on the corridor is planned as night work; for others the optimal regime is left to the follow-on planning.

Read together, the Prague passage and the Tišnov passage show where the real decisions still sit. A plan approved in October 2026 settles the envelope — how many days, which sections — and defers the arrangement that passengers will actually meet to a later round. ROPID's two tracks are the exception that proves it: a concrete gain, extracted at the only moment when the scope was still a draft. Zdopravy.cz says it will go through the 2027 closures in detail once the decision becomes final, which is when the carriers' appeal window closes.