AutoMat on Cycling in the Metropolitan Plan: Significant Improvement, But Still Far from Perfect

The new draft of the Metropolitan Plan is available for viewing at plan.praha.eu . Compared to the earlier version, which was heavily focused on recreation and ignored several key corridors through the city center, the current concept of major bike routes is significantly improved, effectively combining the transport and recreational functions of cycling infrastructure.

The plan newly includes the most important bike routes in inner Prague — a long-standing demand of both the Prague Cycling Commission and AutoMat. There has also been a notable increase in car-free projects designated as public benefit, such as a new bridge from Císařská louka to Smíchov.

The current state of cycling infrastructure in the Metropolitan Plan can therefore be considered acceptable, even though it still contains certain shortcomings and leaves room for further enhancements. The land-use plan is the only binding basis for administrative decisions — what is not included in it simply isn’t guaranteed, regardless of the Sustainable Mobility Plan or Active Mobility Standards, which most municipal projects in the field of cycling infrastructure still fail to follow.

The plan's statement does not require safe solutions for cycling

In the textual part of the Metropolitan Plan the approach to cycling is not entirely balanced. On shared paths for pedestrians and cyclists, the plan calls for ensuring pedestrian safety, but on roads used by motor vehicle traffic, the plan’s provisions do not require ensuring the safety of either pedestrians or cyclists.

Another issue is that corridors along citywide bike routes in development and transformation areas are often designated as so-called “pedestrian permeability” zones. In the plan’s wording, there is not only no guarantee that these routes will be permeable to bicycles, but there is not even a mention that cycling should or could be permitted in such corridors. And because the network of major bike routes in the plan is still relatively sparse compared to the citywide system, the vast majority of bike routes in the citywide network remain insufficiently addressed in the land-use plan.

Routes and public benefit projects still have gaps

In the map component, cycling infrastructure is represented at the very edge of the plan’s scale. This results in the plan’s authors being more inclined to include only those bike routes that require entirely new roads, rather than cyclepaths that could be implemented by reconstructing the existing street profile.

Even so, we would welcome additions in certain corridors that are important from a cycling perspective, even if they are not part of the primary network. This includes, for example, Průmyslová Street, which is not fully covered by a major bike route along its entire length. Large areas of the city remain unserved by any bike route, such as the neighborhoods of Lhotka and Kamýk.

And although the situation has significantly improved in terms of designating the most important projects as public benefit structures, we still miss this designation for many segments of primary bike routes and for selected man-made structures (especially bridges).

You can submit comments too

If you’d like to comment on the Metropolitan Plan regarding cycling, we recommend focusing on missing major bike routes in corridors where construction is necessary—especially in areas designated for development. For bike routes already included in the plan, it makes sense to request that the project be designated as a public benefit structure, particularly if a study exists that can support the public interest in the project.

From a more technical standpoint, it’s also possible to request the reclassification of certain sections from the “existing” to the “planned” state if a bike route cannot be easily implemented in its current corridor. Positive comments are also useful—confirm support for those bike routes proposed in the plan that you genuinely want to see built.

How to submit comments? More information is available on the website of the Institute of Planning. The deadline is December 3, 2025.

AutoMat's comments are still relevant

The AutoMat association will continue to push for these issues. Our objections are supported by the signatures of hundreds of Prague residents and therefore carry more weight than individual submissions. We are currently reviewing our previous objections—some of which were accepted—and are strengthening our arguments where past objections were not approved.