ŘSD plans to announce tenders for the R52 this year, construction will begin in a year

Brno - The Road and Motorway Directorate (ŘSD) wants to obtain a land-use decision for two of the three stages of the expressway R52 from Pohořelice to Mikulov by the end of this year. This year, it also plans to announce the first two tenders for its preparation. The controversial construction, which after connecting to the Austrian highway A5 is expected to create a four-lane connection between Brno and Vienna, could start in 2010 and end four years later. This was said today by the general director of the ŘSD Alfred Brunclík. The intergovernmental agreement between the Czech Republic and Austria on the highway connection was signed by both parties on Friday, nearly ten years have passed since the first government resolution on the construction.
    "We expect that the land-use decision for the first section Pohořelice - Ivaň, where preparations are the most advanced, will be issued first. This will be followed by the third section of the construction Perná - state border near Mikulov. The biggest problems in discussing the land-use decision await us in the middle section Ivaň - Perná, where the road crosses the Novomlýnské reservoirs. There we anticipate that we will obtain the land-use decision only next year," said Brunclík.
    The Austrian parliament already decided in 1999 by amending the law to route the A5 highway to Mikulov; on the Czech side, disputes have been ongoing for several years over whether to expand the existing road I/52 from Brno to Mikulov or utilize the D2 highway from Brno to Břeclav and from there construct a connector to the state border. The Břeclav variant has long been advocated by environmentalists and the Green Party, who fear damage to nature near the Novomlýnské reservoirs and the Pálava Protected Landscape Area. The Ministry of Transport and the South Moravian Region, on the other hand, have long been preparing a route through Mikulov, which they claim is cheaper and less harmful to nature than building a completely new road near Břeclav.
    The preparations for the R52 have been accompanied by numerous disputes and lawsuits from the beginning. The most recent and important one is now being reviewed by the Supreme Administrative Court in Brno. It is to assess whether the spatial plan for Břeclav, in which the corridor R52 is indicated, was approved according to the law. Regional councilor Anna Procházková expects that the court will not find any violations. "The complaints first went to the Ministry of the Interior because we allegedly did not act in accordance with the law on regions. The Ministry for Regional Development also investigated whether there had been a procedural error. According to both ministries and other involved state administration authorities, everything is in order, so I hope the Supreme Administrative Court will confirm this," she told ČTK today.
    In the event that the court annuls the spatial plan for Břeclav, the land-use proceedings for the construction can proceed according to the valid spatial plans of the municipalities through whose cadastre the road passes. According to Procházková, this primarily concerns the unproblematic first and third stages. "The region is currently processing the principles of spatial development, which take precedence over the spatial plans of municipalities and higher territorial units. The document should be approved by the representatives by the end of this year," she added. According to these principles, the middle stage, which lacks support from the involved municipalities, would then continue.
    Last year, the government issued a resolution stating that both variants would be built. The construction of R52 is expected to cost ten billion, while the variant utilizing the D2 highway would cost one to three billion crowns more according to a comparative study. However, according to the Czech ambassador to Austria, Jan Koukal, for the Austrians, the priority is the A5 highway to Mikulov, and a potential connection between the two countries at Břeclav currently lacks political and public support.