Remembering Prague’s Cycle Routes (5): the Left-Bank A1 Route in southern Prague

The significance of the A1 cycle route

Cycle route A1 belongs to the original pair of „single-digit“ routes which border the Vltava, together with the A2 route. Its priority section has always been the part south of the Barrandov Bridge toward Radotín, where long-distance route No. 3 already ran along existing roads before 2005. For passage through the city center and the northern part of Prague, route A2 was always preferred; as a result, route A1 stayed somewhat in the background compared to the „number two.“ Some of its sections, planned or prepared twenty years ago, were only realized recently or are still waiting for preparation.

As with route A2, a feasibility study was created for route A1 in 2021, proposing the modernization of certain sections—aligning with the then-recently completed Standards of Active Mobility. Let’s ride along the A1 route starting from the south and look at selected milestones of its implementation.

The largest amount of information on projects between 2011 and 2013 (of which there were quite a few on route A1) would have been found on the „Praha Cyklistická“ (Cycling Prague) website, which was managed voluntarily by a member of the cycling commission at the time. However, updates to this website were first stopped in 2013 (guess why) and it was later shut down without a replacement. Today, we can only view the Praha Cyklistická pages selectively via the Wayback Machine. The state of the main Prague cycle routes in 2011 was briefly outlined in a guide from that year on how to cycle safely to the city center.

Still waters in Radotín

In Radotín, asphalt cycle paths along the Berounka river were implemented from 2007; before that, an unpaved path led from Šárova kola to the Radotín harbor. Between 2019 and 2021, the A1 path in Radotín was widened. It is one of the few sections of divided path (separated for pedestrians and cyclists) we have in Prague. It was one of the larger projects whose preparation and execution was resumed during Councilor Dolínek’s tenure.

When we turn to the Prague border, the marked route from the Radotín Biotop toward Černošice zig-zags unnaturally to avoid private coastal land with an unpaved road.

In Radotín itself, things have always happened somewhat independently, but we will likely get to that in the article regarding the A0 orbital route.

The cycle lane at Radotín Harbor

The busy Výpadová Street, with its narrow sidewalk along the Radotín Harbor, presented a major obstacle to marking the new A1 route outside the historical corridor of long-distance route No. 3 on Radotínská Street. By the mid-2000s, Radotínská was becoming unsustainable for cycling due to ever-increasing suburban traffic.

In 2013, a solution was implemented: a combination of legalized sidewalk access heading away from the center, and a dedicated cycle lane heading toward the center. Today, we might think, „Well, that’s trivial,“ because such legalizations and cycle lanes are everywhere in Prague. But around 2010, this was a total novelty. Drawing a cycle lane on a road with an 80 km/h speed limit seemed unacceptable, and the traffic solution was subject to complex negotiations.

Discussions about physically separating cycle lanes were already taking place in 2010. This article on Městem na kole reflected the early stages of that debate. Ultimately, however, the cycle lane at Radotín Harbor was implemented in a fairly conventional manner, with colored pictograms and a dashed line, similar to the one on Povltavská. In the first half of the 2010s—the peak of the cycle lane boom—preference was given to the idea of „fast“ cyclists who needed to overtake slower ones, which greater physical separation would have hindered.

Less obvious, but equally revolutionary, was the legalization of the sidewalk in the form of a „pedestrian path with cycling permitted.“ Mention of the possibility of legalizing sidewalk cycling only entered legislation through an amendment to Act 361/2000 in February 2016. Until then, legalizing sidewalks outside of the „shared path“ (stezka) regime existed in a legal vacuum; every individual proposal for a regime matching „cyclists in a pedestrian zone“ required very difficult negotiations.

This only highlights how poorly Act 361 was initially conceived for non-motorized transport and how difficult the effort has been to move it toward a more sustainable form. After all, the Road Traffic Act is still being patched up fifteen years later and, in my opinion, it simply no longer fits the times.

To be continued.