The Overpass Velká Chuchle Argued Over for Years Now Has Its Foundations. The Level Crossing Goes in 2027

The road overpass over the Praha–Beroun railway at Velká Chuchle has finished its foundations and moved into the part of the job that will be visible from the street. Správa železnic, the national infrastructure manager, told Zdopravy.cz that the substructure is complete and the site has passed from earthworks into building the load-bearing deck.

The bridge replaces a four-track level crossing. Its contract went to Váhostav and Colas at 474.6 million crowns, and the schedule still puts commissioning at the end of 2027 — a date Správa železnic says holds.

Work is currently proceeding on the bridge itself, chiefly formwork, reinforcement and concreting of the individual parts of the structure including the abutments, piers and load-bearing elements. At the same time the bearings that will transfer the bridge's load are being installed, and work connected with post-tensioning the bridge structure continues.

— David Kabele, spokesman for Správa železnic

Alongside the bridge, utility diversions continue — the water main above all — and sections of a second, smaller bridge over the Vrutice brook are being finished.

Overpass or underpass: the argument that cost the years

The phrase in the reporting is "years blocked", and the blockage was local rather than technical. Replacing crossing P261 was originally meant to be part of the modernisation of the railway between Smíchov and Radotín. It came out of that scheme because the Velká Chuchle district assembly could not agree on what it wanted built: an underpass or an overpass.

Zdopravy reports that the district's then mayor, Lenka Felix, was a long-standing opponent of the overpass and pushed the underpass variant. In the spring of 2021 the district's councillors removed her from office. The report does not give the reason for that removal, and it is worth not reading one into the sequence.

Správa železnic wanted the overpass, and it had the paperwork: the variant was approved by the transport ministry's central commission, and the positions of the police and of Technická správa komunikací, together with the cost calculations, all pointed the same way. Construction finally started in the summer of 2024.

That is the shape of the thing. One municipal district held up a half-billion-crown piece of railway infrastructure on a question — bridge up or bridge down — that every authority consulted had answered the same way. Whether that reads as obstruction or as due process depends on where you sit. What is not in dispute is that the crossing outlasted the modernisation scheme it was supposed to be removed by.

What happens to the crossing

When the overpass opens, crossing P261 is abolished outright. In its place comes a step-free pedestrian underpass, with exits built on Starochuchelská, Dostihová and Radotínská.

That last detail is the one with the most consequence for anyone living there. The underpass gives a direct connection to the new Praha-Velká Chuchle railway station — which means the scheme is not only removing a conflict between road and rail, but attaching the district to its own station on foot. A level crossing carries cars and people across the tracks at the price of stopping both whenever a train comes. What replaces it separates the two: the cars go over on the bridge, the pedestrians go under, and the station becomes reachable without waiting for barriers.