Trams Return to the National Museum Nearly Six Months Early

Trams are running past the National Museum again. Dopravní podnik hl. m. Prahy announced on 4 September that the Muzeum tram track is finished, and lines 11 and 13 returned to their original route between Italská, Muzeum and I. P. Pavlova from the first departures on Saturday 5 September. The reopening comes nearly six months ahead of the planned date, which had been the turn of February and March 2027.

The build was given twenty months and took under fifteen. That is the whole story of the project as DPP tells it, and the company attributes the gain to coordination rather than to speed: the track work ran alongside a parallel investment by Technická správa komunikací, which used the same closure to demolish two bridge structures under Legerova street — the disused X675 — and to abolish the P524 underpass, part of which it has rebuilt as a facility for the gardeners who look after the greenery here. To get at the underpass, ČTK reports, contractors temporarily diverted car traffic off the magistrála and into the tram alignment itself.

The construction did not take the expected 20 months, but not quite 15.

— Jan Šurovský, board vice-chair and technical director – Surface, DPP

The contractors were a consortium of PORR, PORR Bau and Hans Wendel CZ. ČTK puts the cost of renewing the track along Vinohradská and Škrétova at CZK 224.7 million excluding VAT, to be covered by a European subsidy; DPP confirms the project is co-funded from the EU's Transport Programme 2021–2027 but does not give a figure of its own.

What was actually rebuilt

DPP laid new track from the existing stub in the middle of the so-called museum oasis, built the junction branching at Vinohradská and Legerova, and tied it into the network in both directions — towards Vinohradská and towards Škrétova. It then completely rebuilt the existing track along Vinohradská between the Španělská and Legerova junctions, together with the adjacent footways, carriageways and their drainage.

The track alongside Legerova sits in a new position, with wider spacing between the rails relative to the track triangle at the junction. The Muzeum stops are, unlike their predecessors, entirely step-free and set opposite one another, with platforms long enough to handle two multi-articulated trams at once and pedestrian crossings at both ends. The track is surfaced in setts and the footways in Prague mosaic. Where people are expected to cut across the rails towards the crossing over Legerova, five illuminated strips have been laid along the track; at dusk and after dark they light and flash to warn pedestrians that a tram is coming. DPP says it is the first such installation beside tram tracks anywhere in Prague.

The layout follows the Kulturní distrikt study drawn by the Institute of Planning and Development and approved by the city council at the beginning of 2018 — a document now eight years old, delivering its first built stretch.

The half that is still a building site

What reopened is one operational half of a larger scheme. The Vinohradská section forms a single operating unit with the Václavské náměstí track still under construction, and trams will not run from Wenceslas Square through the museum oasis into Vinohradská or Škrétova until the end of June 2027.

That work is the expensive part. ČTK gives the planned cost of the roughly 550-metre track in the upper part of the square as CZK 1.24 billion, and DPP spokesperson Daniel Šabík told iROZHLAS.cz that construction began in mid-2024 and is to run until the middle of next year. It also covers the reconstruction of the ceiling slabs over Muzeum metro station and alterations to the square itself, whose lower part was rebuilt in recent years.

Jaromír Beránek, Prague's first deputy mayor for transport, tied the early reopening to the work that has just started on the other side of the city centre.

The restoration of the tram link between I. P. Pavlova and Vinohradská street by lines 11 and 13 has happened significantly ahead of schedule. It comes at the right moment — construction of the new tram line towards Jarov has already begun in Žižkov. The restored connection via Muzeum thus creates a welcome alternative route for us at the start of the school year.

— Jaromír Beránek, first deputy mayor of Prague