The building permit for the D metro line has been upheld by the Supreme Administrative Court (Nejvyšším správním soudem – NSS), which has rejected the cassation complaints of the Pankrácká company and a man from Kovařovicova Street in Prague 4, who had previously unsuccessfully challenged the building permit at the Municipal Court in Prague. The decision of the Supreme Administrative Court is temporarily available on the official notice board. The dispute concerned specifically the traffic section from Pankrác to Nové Dvory. The construction has already started and the Prague City Council has granted permission in June 2021.
The opponents of the construction pointed out in the cassation complaint, for example, the alleged systemic bias of the municipality’s officials with regard to the statements of Prague politicians. “The complainants have neither proved nor alleged that the officials were pressured by the city administration to make decisions contrary to professional (binding) opinions or on the basis of incomplete construction documentation. The content of the file does not show any such thing,” the judgment states.
Other objections concerned, for example, the placement of a pile wall at an apartment building in Kovařovicova Street or the alleged commencement of construction before the building permit was issued. According to the judgment, the complainants should have raised their objections to the pile wall in the construction procedure. As regards the second objection, the administrative court stated that it was the geological survey that was at issue, not the construction itself.
The respondents to the construction initially brought an action before the Regional Court in Ostrava, which has a specialised chamber for the most important projects built under the Linear Law. However, the NSS has previously concluded that the metro is not one of those projects. The claim was thus heard and dismissed by the administrative section of the Municipal Court in Prague.
The blue metro line D should connect Písnice with náměstí Míru and relieve traffic in the south of the capital. The preparation of the construction was plagued with numerous problems and disputes. A one-kilometre section between Pankrác and Olbrachtova stations is currently under construction, which is the most complicated due to the construction of a transfer node on line C. The transport company was counting on the construction of another section from Olbrachtova to Nové Dvory this October.
However, the Antimonopoly Office cancelled the tender for the second part of the route. The appeal against the decision, filed by the Prague transport company, is now to be heard by the authority’s chairman, Petr Mlsna.
Source: CTK
