The High-Speed Line's Only Prague Section Goes to Tender for 300 Million

Správa železnic will tender the designer for the high-speed line's section across Prague within the next few months. Its board approved launching the contract at its last meeting, and the estimated value is around 300 million crowns. The section runs from Praha-Vršovice to Praha-Běchovice — the so-called northern branch — and Zdopravy.cz reported the decision on 16 September.

By the standards of a line that will run to Brno, this is a short piece. It is also the only piece inside the capital, which is what makes it the complicated one.

What the designer is being asked to draw

The contract covers project preparation including the project intent, the documentation for the construction permit and the design documentation for execution.

The estimated value of the contract is approximately 300 million crowns. We expect it to be launched in the coming months.

— Nela Friebová, spokeswoman for Správa železnic

This is the second part of the future Prague–Brno high-speed line to reach the tender stage for construction-permit documentation. The first, from Běchovice to Světlá nad Sázavou, has been in competition since spring; Správa železnic is currently evaluating the two bids it received, and ÚOHS is examining that contract at the same time.

So the two tenders meet at Běchovice. One covers 106 kilometres out into Vysočina and is stuck at the competition authority. The other covers the stretch from there back into the city and has not been advertised yet.

The corridor was fixed in August

The legal groundwork for the Prague section was done over the summer. In August the government approved the partial spatial development plan — the Dílčí územní rozvojový plán — which defines the corridors for high-speed lines on the territory of the capital. Specifically, it defines the Praha-Vršovice – Praha-Běchovice corridor, including a track layout for short-term stabling of train sets.

That is the difference between this tender and an ordinary one at this stage: the designer will be working inside a corridor that has already been settled at government level, not proposing where the line should go.

The freight connection buried in the same scheme

One element in the package has nothing to do with high-speed passenger trains. The scheme includes a new connecting track between the Praha-Libeň – Praha-Malešice and Praha-Malešice – Praha-Běchovice lines, known as the Jahodnická spojka, which is intended to improve the passage of freight trains through the Prague node.

Read alongside the stated purpose of the whole section, that starts to look like the actual case for it.

VRT Praha is not only part of the future high-speed network. It is at the same time an important capacity project for the whole Prague railway node. Separating part of the long-distance traffic from the busiest conventional lines will bring more room for more reliable regional, passenger and freight traffic and increase the resilience of railway operations during various incidents.

— Tomáš Tóth, director general of Správa železnic, quoted from earlier remarks

The argument is that the Prague section pays for itself in capacity on the existing network whether or not anyone is yet running at high speed through it. A city whose railway node is the constraint on its regional services has an interest in that argument being true.

What is not yet known is who will bid, or when. The neighbouring contract towards Světlá nad Sázavou drew two bids and is now sitting in front of both an evaluation panel and the competition authority. This one has not been advertised at all.