ŘSD Goes to Court Over Its Fine for the Suchdol Bridge Competition, While the Drahaň Valley Bridge Still Has No Confirmed Winner

The Road and Motorway Directorate (ŘSD) has filed a lawsuit against the fine the competition authority imposed over the architectural competition for the Prague ring road's motorway bridge across the Vltava at Suchdol. The authority, ÚOHS, found that the design ŘSD chose to build breaks the conditions ŘSD itself set for the competition. ŘSD's position is that this changes nothing.

ŘSD disagrees and is defending itself with a lawsuit. The process has no suspensive effect, which means the scheme or project will not be changed any more.

— Jan Rýdl, ŘSD spokesman, to Zdopravy.cz

Both bridges ŘSD put out to competition for the unbuilt north-western stretch of the ring road, sections 518 (Ruzyně–Suchdol) and 519 (Suchdol–Březiněves), have now run long. ŘSD says the delays will not fundamentally affect preparation of the road, but concedes the schedule is slipping slightly.

What ÚOHS objected to

The Vltava competition ran from October 2024 to February 2025. The jury published its ranking then, but the final decision on which design would actually be built took ŘSD and then the Ministry of Transport's Central Commission more than a year. Only this May was it settled that the bridge would follow the design by the consortium of Stráský, Hustý, partneři and Studio acht.

In the meantime Lukáš Vráblík of Valbek, whose design was ranked second, complained to ÚOHS. His objection was specific: the foundations of the winning bridge's piers sit outside the chainage the competition allowed. On one bank they overrun the defined area by six metres, on the other by seven. ŘSD argued on appeal that this was immaterial.

In July the ÚOHS chairman Petr Mlsna confirmed that the winning design contravened the competition conditions and fined ŘSD 220,000 crowns. Because the proceedings had no suspensive effect, the bridge has continued to be designed to the winning variant for the project permit throughout. The court review is at its very beginning: according to Filip Vrána of the ÚOHS press office, the authority has not yet even received the text of the lawsuit.

The second bridge

The other competition, for the crossing of the Drahaň valley on the Suchdol–Březiněves section, was announced last October. Eleven studios entered, and the selection committee told them the results at the start of July. ŘSD did not publish the ranking, waiting instead for the appeal period to lapse; the order of the five finalists, who shared 10 million crowns, then appeared on the website of the Czech Chamber of Architects.

First prize went to entry no. 3, by Blank architekti and AZ GEO: a five-span prestressed concrete bridge carrying both directions of the ring road, with low pylons and stays rising 14 metres above the carriageway. The jury praised its proportions, how it sits in the valley and the footpath and cycle route on its upper level, and recommended working out better how that route connects to the surrounding network. The bridge is estimated to cost 1.283 billion crowns. All five finalists are now on show at the National Technical Museum.

The competition also covered the walking and cycling routes leading to the bridge, the roads beneath it and other affected ground around Čimice and Dolní Chabry. The bridge crosses the valley between the sewage treatment plant and a bus stop. Under the approved documentation it is to be 516 metres long, at a height of 31.1 metres.

But as with the Vltava bridge, the jury does not have the last word. The Ministry of Transport's Central Commission decides, on the basis of ŘSD's analysis of the variants, and it has not yet either confirmed the winner or chosen another of the five.

The winner will be announced by the end of November at the latest.

— Jan Rýdl, ŘSD spokesman

Where the schedule now stands

Completion of the documentation for the building permit, and the start of engineering work, has moved from this year to the first quarter of 2027 on both sections. ŘSD wants the project permit next year and, on current plans, to start building in 2028.

Not every district and municipality on the route has agreed to it. ŘSD director general Radek Mátl said recently in a podcast that some will challenge the permit:

It can be expected that there are city districts and municipalities that will contest the permit for the ring road. But they are a handful, it is not global opposition; we have agreed with most of them.

— Radek Mátl, director general of ŘSD

Read together, the two competitions show the same pattern. A jury picks, and then the ministry's commission takes months to decide whether the jury's pick is what gets built — more than a year in the Vltava case. The architectural competition was meant to settle the shape of these bridges; on both crossings it has instead become the first of several rounds, and on the Vltava one the shape that won is now officially out of line with the brief it won.