Brno councilors approved the preparations for the competition for a new train station

Brno – The Brno city council approved the preparation of an international urban transport-architectural competition to determine the form of the new main train station and its surroundings. It is set to be announced in August, will be in two phases, and will last for a year. Based on the winning proposal, the Railway Administration (SŽ) can announce a contract for the construction of a new station and the city for the construction of a transport hub, the area before the station, and the area behind the station, Brno's mayor Markéta Vaňková (ODS) and her deputy Petr Hladík (KDU-ČSL) told reporters today. The competition will cost 50 million crowns, of which the city will pay ten and SŽ will pay 40.

The competition is extraordinary in scope and will be organized by the Office of the City Architect of Brno. It includes the station building, tracks, the area before and behind the station, the design of the municipal public transport hub, and it should also find a suitable location for the bus station. The new train station will be located at the site of the current lower station, as decided by the Central Committee of the Ministry of Transport based on a feasibility study.

The study was published three years ago, and some supporters of the selected variant of relocating the station spoke of a construction start date in 2020. This date has proven to be unrealistic, as indicated by the mayor's statement today. "I believe that something beautiful and highly functional will come out of the competition, and hopefully we will manage to realize it in our lifetime," Vaňková said. There is currently no discussion about the start date for the construction of the new station, estimated at around 50 billion crowns. Modernization of the station in Brno-Židenice will take priority.

The authors of the winning proposal will receive six million crowns, the authors of the second will get five million, and the third four million crowns.

The new main train station is expected to become a landmark of the so-called southern center, which is the part of Brno between the current main and lower stations. It is mostly undeveloped, but developers expect to start construction in the near future, before the train station itself is built.

The train station in Brno is to be relocated because the current one does not have the capacity for further development of railway transport in Southern Moravia. According to the feasibility study, it is more advantageous to build a new station one kilometer south of the current one than to reconstruct the existing one while it is in operation. However, the tram will be less accessible from most places in Brno than it is currently, the study concluded.