The preparation of the planned metro station B Depo Zličín has so far cost 57.19 million CZK

Prague - The preparation for the construction of the planned metro B station Depo Zličín has so far cost nearly 57.19 million crowns. This amount was spent on acquiring land, the project, and organizing an architectural competition. This was indicated by a document discussed today by the city council's transport committee. The city leadership suspended the preparation for the construction of the station, which was to be built directly in the depot, this August. The mayor's deputy Zdeněk Hřib (Pirates) justified this at the time by a lack of future passengers, stating that a new station would not make economic or transport sense. The opposition councilor and former mayor's deputy Adam Scheinherr (Praha Sobě) disagreed with the cessation of preparation at that time.

The station was to become the new terminus of metro B and utilize the existing tracks leading to the Zličín depot. Depo Zličín was supposed to be one of the few surface stations of the Prague metro, and a large P+R parking garage was to be built alongside it.

Of the total amount spent on the preparation, the two purchased plots were the most expensive. The city spent nearly 49.49 million crowns on this. For project work, the city, or the transport company (DPP), spent almost 6.6 million. The remaining funds were made up of the costs for the architectural competition for the station's design.

One of the arguments for building the station is the planned P+R parking lot with 1,200 spaces. However, according to the document, the city is currently preparing a P+R only with five hundred spaces. At the same time, buses would not be able to enter the new station, which would continue to terminate at the metro B Zličín.

"There would likely be no operational savings, and from the perspective of the contemplated passenger transfer, there would be a real risk that no transfers to the metro would occur at all, because only every third train would enter the Depo Zličín station for operational reasons," the material states. Instead of the original plan to build a new station, the DPP will only modernize the depot, with the tracks allowing for the future construction of a station.

Scheinherr criticized the city's decision in August. "The freshly obtained valid zoning permit is a great result of DPP's work, unfortunately with a bitter taste for Prague residents. It literally would have sufficed to do nothing, and Prague could have started building a new station in two years," he said at that time.

In a similar way to the proposed station Depo Zličín, the Depo Hostivař station in Strašnice was built in 2006, which the DPP constructed as part of the depot from one of its former halls. In addition to the depots in Hostivař and Zličín, there is a third one operating in the Prague metro at Kačerov.