Children of the Earth are suing the zoning decision regarding the Brno railway station

Brno - The association Children of the Earth filed a lawsuit on Wednesday with the Regional Court in Ostrava against the zoning decision for the construction of the relocated train station in Brno. The decision was issued in September 2013 by the building authority of the Brno-střed municipal district and was confirmed only last December by the South Bohemian regional office, which rejected three appeals. In the lawsuit, Children of the Earth claims that the decision lacks an opinion on landscape protection and that the opinion on noise protection was issued unlawfully, according to them. This was stated in a press release by the association's chairman Miroslav Patrik. They expect a decision within five months.

The association filed the lawsuit a year after Brno city councilors decided that they wanted the new station to be in a relocated position, specifically at the site of the current cargo lower station about a kilometer south of the present main station. The second option was for the station to be located approximately at the current platforms five and six of the main station near Nové sady street.

"In the lawsuit, we argue the absence of a binding opinion on landscape protection, which was not issued at all. We further contest the unlawful issuance of a binding opinion on noise protection, as it is based on a completely inadequate noise study from 2012, which purposefully underestimates higher noise levels around the tracks, especially in Židenice, and also illogically takes old noise burdens into account," Patrik stated.

This is already the second lawsuit by Children of the Earth against the zoning decision for the relocated station in Brno, with the Regional Court in Brno having canceled the first zoning decision from November 2006 in a ruling in December 2008. The lawsuit was also filed by the association Stará Osada - Židenice and 13 individuals from Židenice. The second zoning decision from July 2010 was canceled by the Brno magistrate in November 2011. The court is now addressing the legality of the third zoning decision.

According to Patrik, the current zoning decision is technically and structurally unusable as the project has changed. Furthermore, it does not account for the effective use of freight rail transport, he added. Freight carriers have long criticized the project and are concerned about the low permeability of the Brno hub.

The new station is projected to cost around 50 billion crowns according to the feasibility study, while the city will have to build infrastructure costing about three billion crowns to make any transport service to the station possible. The city and the region also wanted to build an underground railway in the north-south direction with the station, which the government did not take into account in its decision. SŽDC is still preparing the assignment for the feasibility study for this railway with the city. Over the past year, the preparation for the construction has hardly progressed at all.