Prague has a governing coalition, and the transport portfolio is going back to someone who has held it before. On Wednesday STAN, the Spolu alliance of ODS and TOP 09, and Praha sobě announced an agreement that gives them 47 of the 65 seats on the city assembly. STAN's leader Petr Hlaváček, until now the deputy mayor responsible for development, is to become mayor. Adam Scheinherr, who leads Praha sobě, returns as deputy mayor and councillor for transport, replacing the Pirates who ran the portfolio in the last term. Zdopravy.cz reported the deal on 11 November; the formal election of the new council is expected next week.
What he says he will build
Asked by Zdopravy.cz what he intends to do, Scheinherr named a list that is almost entirely construction:
In transport we want to get the construction of the Městský okruh and the Hloubětín tunnel going, build more tram lines and make progress on the new metro lines. In property we will continue the reconstruction of Výstaviště and the Holešovice market, and we will start the repair of the Karlín barracks. The handling of city property must be completely transparent.
— Adam Scheinherr, leader of Praha sobě
The Městský okruh is the city's inner ring road, still unfinished in its north-eastern section; the Hloubětín tunnel is a separate road scheme in Prague 9 and 14. Neither the coalition announcement nor Scheinherr's answer gives dates, budgets or an order of priority, and the coalition programme itself has not been published.
A changed council, and a warning to DPP
The eleven-member city council will have five members from STAN, including the mayor, four from Spolu and two from Praha sobě — Scheinherr on transport and David Bouz on property. Hlaváček told Wednesday's press conference that the new leadership plans changes at the top of the big city-owned companies, and singled out the transit operator DPP as one that needs "strengthening". He did not say what that means in practice.
The agreement took several weeks. Zdopravy.cz reports that ODS tried to persuade STAN to form a two-party coalition in which ODS itself would take transport; Hlaváček preferred a broader arrangement and held talks with Praha sobě and with the Pirates, who lost heavily in October's election and had faced frequent criticism over their running of the transport department. Spolu's leader Tomáš Portlík said parking zone changes had been one of the points of friction. These are the issues Hlaváček put on the table the day after the vote, alongside a higher price for the annual public transport pass and preparation of a charge for driving inside the ring road (which we reported on 13 October); whether any of it survived into the coalition text is not yet known.
The record he brings back
Scheinherr was deputy mayor for transport between 2018 and 2023, according to Zdopravy.cz. He came in as a newcomer to politics and struck many as unorthodox in the role; the outlet notes that transport experts and the mayor of the time credited him with getting a series of construction projects moving. Most of them were opened in the term just ended by his successor, Zdeněk Hřib. In an earlier interview Scheinherr put it himself: residents would appreciate his projects only with time, because he had not been good at selling his work to the public.
Reading it
Read against the list he gave, the appointment is a bet on delivery rather than on policy change. Every item Scheinherr named is a scheme already in preparation; what the coalition is promising is to start them. Whether the combination of a mayor who ran development and a transport councillor who ran transport before can do that faster than the last term managed is the test, and the first concrete sign will be what the coalition does with DPP's management.
Sources
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