Prague 6 declared a transportation emergency on Thursday, while warning it would take radical steps to reduce congestion. Among the most controversial ideas put forward was to use special traffic lights that would allow cars belonging to residents of the district to use bus lanes. Mayor Ondrej Kolar said Prague 6 would also begin forcing anyone not from the district to pay for parking, complaining that non-residents visiting Prague have turned it into a free parking lot. The overall concept, said Kolar, is literally to make it more difficult to get into Prague 6. Deputy mayor Jiří Lala said said he blames these drastic measures on the City of Prague’s inability to build new Park & Ride lots and complete the outer ring road for the situation. “In order to protect residents of Prague 6, we’re forced to begin functioniing as a sort of island with limited access,” he said. “No doubt we’ll make life more difficlt for many people, but the problem is the completion of key, strategic projects by the City of Prague, which will finally have to act.”
