Workers completed a CZK 225m investment into Prague’s infrastructure this morning at 5 a.m. with the re-opening of the northern vestibule of the Anděl station, the city’s busiest public transportation hub. But the long escalators that bring commuters up to the buses and trams that branch out from the traffic node also serve thousands of shoppers and office workers. For the past 258 days (since last Sept 25) they’ve all been forced to walk a couple hundred meters extra to the station’s far end at Na Knížeci to get in and out of the metro.
Management officials at Nový Smíchov shopping center, who admit the work has hurt footfall, used the opportunity to carry out reconstruction an modernization work of its own near the metro entrance. The new escalators have new safety features that match current norms and they should be far less expensive to operate and to maintain. Each of the old stairs, for example, weighed 45 kilograms. The new ones weigh just 18 kg each.
