No room for bicycles
Not everyone in Prague is concerned that the closed
bridges will cause long-term economic damage. Mayor
Igor Nėmec is proud that Prague now has such a large
pedestrian zone. Before he left Prague Business
Journal to join MF Dnes, Jan Macháček wrote in favor
of permanently restricting private car use and making
space for public transportation, walkers and bikers.
Prague lags behind many European cities in terms of
bike paths, and a city transport official told us that it
never even occurred to him or his colleagues to use
bicycles as a partial replacement for the flooded metro.
Prague spends about Kč 10m each year on bike paths,
but they're primarily for recreational and not commuting
purposes. An estimated 160-180km of the planned
400km in bike paths have been completed. We were
told that instead of speeding up the process of
completing the paths, the floods will actually slow it
down.
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