The Metro Ring Now Has a Number: CZK 220bn, and a Feasibility Study Due Next Week

City representatives put a figure on Prague's proposed orbital metro on 2 September: built with standard tunnels, line E would cost an estimated CZK 220 billion. Councillors are due to approve the commissioning of a feasibility study next week, and it is that study — not the estimate — that will establish what the line actually is.

The proposed route runs from Smíchov via Pankrác, Bohdalec, Žižkov, Vysočany and Letňany to the planned northern terminal of the high-speed railway. At roughly 22 kilometres it would enlarge Prague's metro network by 29 percent, which is the scale that makes the price plausible rather than alarming.

What the study is for

The Institute of Planning and Development will prepare it, following on from a first analysis the institute has already done. Deputy mayor for transport Jaromír Beránek (Pirates) said the study will examine the placement of stations, how they tie into existing and future development, interchange relationships, economic demands, and the possible use of different types of rail transport on individual sections. Beránek put the work at a year to a year and a half once councillors commission it.

That last item is the one to watch. The line would not have to run underground for its whole length, which is directly connected to what the whole project costs — and the study is to address that too. An orbital route through Bohdalec and Vysočany crosses a good deal of ground where a surface or elevated alignment is at least arguable.

The councillors are also to commission a manual for using the development potential of the existing metro stations and their surroundings — a separate document, and a signal that the city is treating station catchments as a planning asset rather than as leftover space.

An idea from the 1980s, and a corridor now protected

Deputy mayor Petr Hlaváček (STAN) traced the idea of a metro line connecting parts of the city outside the centre to the 1980s. What is new is that the reservation for its route is now written into the Metropolitan Plan, the zoning document that took effect on Tuesday. A corridor in a binding plan is not a decision to build, but it is the thing that stops the route being built over while the city argues about it.

The stated purpose is to get people out of cars and onto public transport, relieve the centre, fill in the direct fast links between outer districts that are currently missing or inadequate, and serve areas where more residential development is expected.

Tomáš Portlík (ODS), chair of the Spolu group of councillors, set the condition plainly:

The costs must be such that the city is able to pay them.

— Tomáš Portlík, chair of the Spolu group of Prague city councillors

Where the ring stops being a metro

The scheme was first pushed in the previous term by Adam Scheinherr (Praha Sobě), then deputy mayor for transport and now an opposition councillor. He identified the eastern section as the priority, but his proposal also envisaged eventually closing the whole circle via Bohnice, Podbaba and Strahov back to Smíchov.

Beránek said a tram would be enough for that western half, served by the new Bohnice–Podbaba line. Capacity there could be raised, he suggested, by lengthening platforms so that longer sets can call at them, or by raising the permitted speed. This is the substantive difference between the two proposals: whether the ring is a metro all the way round, or a metro on the east and a tram on the west.

One date that does not add up

ČTK reports Beránek as saying construction should follow the completion of line D between náměstí Míru and Písnice as quickly as possible, and gives that line's completion, on the current schedule, as the start of 2026. That does not square with the schedule the city gave for the same line at the end of August, when the first operating section, Pankrác to Nové Dvory, was put at the second half of 2032. We report both dates as they were published rather than reconcile them.