DPP Buys the Study That Decides How Metro D Reaches the Two Main Stations

Dopravní podnik hl. m. Prahy has picked the designers who will work out how metro line D gets from Náměstí Míru into the centre. The winning bid, reported by Zdopravy.cz on 3 September, came from a consortium of Metroprojekt Praha, Sudop Praha and Mott MacDonald CZ at CZK 12.85m excluding VAT, against an expected value of CZK 16m. DPP scored the price alongside the authors' experience.

The section is 2.2 kilometres long and would run from the end of the first operating section, past Náměstí Míru, perpendicular through Praha hlavní nádraží and on to Náměstí Republiky. City councillors ordered the study last August. A verification study of the same alignment was done in 2008.

The point is the interchanges, not the length

Two of the three new stations are transfers to lines already in service — C at the main station, B at Náměstí Republiky — and both are also transfers to the railway. That is what the brief is about. DPP's own tender wording, quoted by Zdopravy.cz, states the case plainly:

Building the new connection within the railway node will substantially increase transfer capacity between the railway and the metro. The existing transfer capacity of metro line C is approaching its limit, and it is therefore necessary to split the capacity.

— from the brief for the feasibility study, Dopravní podnik hl. m. Prahy

At Praha hlavní nádraží the D platforms would meet line C — the second such interchange after Pankrác, which is being built now — and also the tunnels and underground station of the regional Metropolitan Express services branded Spodem, previously known as Metro S or Nové spojení II. The Náměstí Republiky end is where line B and Masarykovo nádraží are, and Zdopravy.cz reports that the station is being considered for renaming to Masarykovo nádraží as part of the current tidying-up of station names.

The scheme is therefore sized against a railway that does not exist yet. Prague expects a large increase in rail passengers once the fast connections and the Spodem tunnels are running, and line C is already at capacity; extending D to both main stations is the relief valve. Construction is expected to run in parallel with the Spodem tunnels, between 2037 and 2044.

The Žižkov question, asked twice

The study also has to examine an alternative branch and a continuation of the line towards Žižkov. That is the same question being put to the authors of a separate feasibility study — the one for the proposed E ring line, which would run through the Nákladové nádraží Žižkov area and is being coordinated by the Institute of Planning and Development.

Read together, the two briefs mean the city is currently paying two teams to answer the same question about the same district from opposite directions: whether Žižkov is served by a spur off D or by a station on a circle line. Neither study has reported, and Zdopravy.cz does not say how the two will be reconciled.

Where the rest of line D stands

None of this is close. The section already under preparation — Pankrác to Náměstí Míru — is scheduled to start in spring 2029 under the current programme, take 84 months and finish in 2036. Councillors called in March last year for that stretch to be accelerated by holding an architectural competition for its stations; DPP launched the competition this July, covering Náměstí Míru and Náměstí bratří Synků.

So the study bought this week concerns the section after the section that has not started yet, on a line whose first trains are a decade away. That is the horizon at which metro decisions are actually taken, and it is why the interchange geometry matters now: the levels and the running tunnels at Hlavní nádraží have to be reserved before anything above them is designed.