Pragoprojekt filed an EIA submission for the Vestecká spojka on August 11, a two-lane road that would provide a direct connection between the D1 motorway (Exit 4) and the D0 ring road’s Vestec exit. Traffic engineers are no doubt happy about progress on the new route, having argued for decades that it would be necessary.
But it’s the land owners along the route near the D1 that have the most to gain. In particular, 80 ha of agricultural land that’s zoned for commercial and residential use. Land registry records show that many of the key parcels now sit inside BFS otevřený podílový fond, an Avant-managed fund for qualified investors established only in November 2024.
The new road passes by Rozkoš and Hrnčiře on its way to Vestec, with two crucial intersections planned on the cadastral territory of Hole u Průhonic. These provide access to a project that’s long been known as the Northwest Development Zone (northwest of Pruhonice). This agricultural land is zoned for a commercial-administrative district and a residential neighbourhood. But nothing can be built until the connector road opens. Further complicating matters, the Vestec connector can’t open until the next section of the D0 (D Zero) ring road is extended to Bechovice.
Source: ksus.cz
High capacity roads in heavily populated zones will always be controversial, so it’s not surprising that not everyone along this one is in favor of it. Take Tibor Švec, mayor of Vestec. “The way it’s been proposed, it won’t do anything for Vestec residents, so for us it’s a pointless project that makes no sense for the municipality,” he told Novinky.cz. “There are other interests here. For years now we’ve felt the pressure to raise the value of land near the D1 motorway through the construction of a new exit.”
The recent EIA filing marks the project’s second attempt at environmental clearance. The first, in 2012, produced a positive assessment — but landowners and the Prague-Křeslice district overturned the territorial decision in court a year later, forcing the project back to zero.
The Vestec connector’s history goes way back, having been first proposed in the 1970s, though it took until 1999 to become part of Prague’s master plan. Phase 1 opened in 2010, bringing traffic from the ring road to Vestec. Phase 2 has been stuck in pre-construction ever since. The Northwest Development Zone has a colourful past, having passed through Czech Land Fund into at one point Eurospektrum Group, which had connections to some political high-flyers, including the adviser to a former PM, the mother of a former head of Prague transport, and a former mayor of Prague.
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