The bridge in Prague 7 that takes cars from the center over the Vltavska metro and tram station has been closed, not for repairs but for demolition. The worst thing about the radical decision isn’t the mess it’s going to make of traffic in the center, which is bad enough already. The real problem is that until this week, the city’s maintenance company (TSK) that allegedly monitors the state of its roads and bridges claimed the structure could be repaired.
To be more specific, three of the seven categories of “fitness” into which bridges are classified in Prague are unsatisfactory: Bad, Very Bad, and Catastrophic. Until Wednesday, the one over Vltavska had been in the “Bad” category until its structural health ‘suddenly deteriorated. It should be remembered that “Bad” is the cateogry the Troja footbridge was in the day it fell into the Vltava river last December. To make matters worse, the Czech News Agency received a copy of a report which now classifies around 70 Prague bridges in the “Bad” category and as many as 20 in the “Very Bad” folder.
