Prague woke up two weeks ago to find that the bridge at the northern end of the Magistrala express road over the Vltavska metro station had been closed and that the tram station there was also shut down. Temporary repair work has at least made tram service possible again, but the city’s new leadership needs to decide whether the bridge can be repaired or to tear it down. Echo24.cz carries an interview with the architect Petr Kučera in which he warns that the bridge’s problems are the first warning of trouble to come. The entire Magistrala road opened exactly 40 years ago, he says, but the road’s lifespan is only 50 years. “Paradoxically, I’m glad about the falling bridge at Vltavská, because now the fact that time is running out for the Magistrala is being talked about publicly.” He says the question of whether to invest heavily in the road’s repair, or to tear it down and build a tunnel beneath the Masaryk train station, will have to be confronted within ten years.
