Looking Back at Prague’s Cycling Routes (2) – Cycle Route A2 in the South of Prague

Ohrobecký stream

Cycle Route A2 essentially begins in Vrané nad Vltavou, two kilometers beyond the borders of Prague. The path from Zbraslav to Vrané was built in 2014—with two “minor” shortcomings. The first was a half-kilometer stretch of land owned by the church, where for five years people simply rode, God help them, across a meadow. The second was crossing the Ohrobecký Stream through a ford, which destroyed the usability of the path both for inline skaters and for road cyclists. The latter therefore continued to stick to the parallel road K Vranému, to the considerable “delight” of drivers, who often expressed their lack of understanding as to why those damned cyclists were not riding on that great new path through overtaking maneuvers that wer not exactly kind.

Although an article on Prahou na kole from 2015 assumed that both problems would be solved within a year and a day, in the end it took until 2021. Difficult negotiations with the Vltava River Basin Authority over a suitable replacement for the ford, higher-priority projects, and perhaps even one instance of tree cutting not carried out in time pushed the realization of these “patches” back by several years. At cycling committee meetings we repeatedly heard urgent reminders, since the then chairman Pavel Polák knew a prominent surgeon from Motol who greatly longed for the construction of the small bridge. These urgencies most likely contributed to the fact that the waiting did not drag on any longer.

At the Modřany railway station – a narrow path

You may be wondering why the path along the former Modřany railway station is only two and a half meters wide, and thus, given the traffic there, is made functional only by a well-worn footpath along the side. The asphalt path here was built in 2003 after demanding negotiations with Czech Railways, which owned the land at the time.

Back then, it was not so obvious that this section would soon become a bottleneck, one where even in Prague we would be able to practice cyclist-pedestrian-inline-skater traffic jams. Or perhaps it was obvious, but the choice was either a two-and-a-half-meter walkway or riding together with cars along Komořanská Street.

And when will the situation here change? Czech Railways sold the land long ago to the construction company Skanska. It plans to invest in the area, but only once it actually begins building. As part of that, the city has been promised that the path will be widened to four meters.

Ledařská

Passing through Ledařská Street is the last section of the southern branch of the A2 where cyclists ride on a street with a significant amount of vehicle traffic, much of it cars searching for parking. A particular nuisance is the intersection with U Kempinku Street, where the frequency of cycling traffic would long ago have warranted giving the route priority—if such ideas ever found fertile ground in the Prague 4 municipal district.

The long-term unsatisfactory and at the same time unchanged state suggests that something is being waited for here: that “Godot” is a bypass of Ledařská Street closer to the Vltava River, including a footbridge over the inlet and a crossing of the access road to the rowing club.

Preparations for the project began with the first wave of cycle paths in this area around 2010, at a time when cycling infrastructure also enjoyed strong support from the Prague 4 municipal district, and several investments in Route A22 were made here. However, the search for a suitable solution and the consent of all landowners dragged on considerably and was essentially reset during the dark period of 2012–2015, when cycling transport was even less financially favored than under the current administrations.

At present, the preparation is at a very advanced stage, and according to behind-the-scenes rumors, construction could have started as early as this year. But in the anemic cycling budget for 2026, you will ultimately not find the project.

Podolí riverside and the Dvorecký bridge

The removal of sections where cyclists are routed onto the roadway along Podolí Riverside has so far only been partial. The section by the gas station is waiting for the reconstruction of a path that was originally supposed to be carried out as early as 2023, but was ultimately postponed until after the opening of the Dvorecký Bridge. At the same time, however, this is not being managed at the moment.

The final stages from the gas station to the Barrandov Bridge, which shift the cycle path closer to the water and which would eliminate the descent from the tram stop down to the river that is dangerous for inline skaters, will most likely never be realized with the current level of financial support for cycling transport.

The interruption of the path at the intersection with Podolská Street became notorious in 2025 due to a week-long bureaucratic saga about moving a incorrectly parked car. It showed how miserable the protection of safe movement for non-motorized road users is in comparison to the arbitrariness of those who leave their ton of iron wherever they please—and how dysfunctional it is to let bad solutions “rot” for the long term because the given problem is supposedly not that pressing.

The signalized crossing there will be replaced by a combined pedestrian crossing and bicycle crossing once the traffic lights at the intersection are reconstructed. Which will happen… once the traffic lights at the intersection are reconstructed.

–– To be continued ––