“There is currently a lot of construction happening in Prague, which is a clear sign that the city is modernizing and moving forward. Unfortunately, no one has yet figured out how to develop a city without closures. While TSK (Technical Road Administration) regularly discusses its planned closures with municipal districts, many other investors, such as gas companies, water companies, or private developers, also need closures for their work. To facilitate coordination with municipal districts and other investors, we are preparing a digital map of construction work. As a result, all parties will be informed in advance to ensure that traffic in Prague operates as smoothly as possible,” says Zdeněk Hřib, Prague's Deputy Mayor for Transportation.

Currently, there are several incomplete databases that track planned construction projects impacting city traffic. However, there is no unified tool that brings all this information together in one place. The new mapping application will assist in coordination between entities, particularly in the long term, making it easier, for example, to coordinate water main repairs with the installation of an optical network, which would otherwise require reopening the sidewalk two years later.

“The good news is that there is a lot of construction happening in Prague, and there will be more. We are preparing a clear mapping application where information from all municipal districts and their organizations regarding construction closures will be centralized. This is an efficient way to work with data, coordinate closure activities, and minimize the burden on traffic flows. In the future, this system will also allow the inclusion of information from the closure database of the Central Bohemian Region,” says Petr Hlaváček, Prague’s Deputy Mayor for Territorial and Strategic Planning. 

“We plan to use shared information from these databases and integrate them into our Geoportal of the City of Prague,” says IPR Director Ondřej Boháč. A key part of the project will be establishing conditions for the input of information from municipal districts, which carry out construction or maintenance work on the roads they manage or grant permissions for temporary closures within their jurisdiction.

The foundation of the information-sharing system will be the creation of a common data standard for construction projects, investment activities, and repairs in public spaces, including for municipal entities. The application is expected to be populated with its first data sets by August 2024.