MD: The completion of the highway network is postponed to 2025

Prague - The Ministry of Transport expects the completion of the basic network of highways and expressways by 2025 in a so-called realistic scenario. This is five years later than previously stated. Representatives of the Ministry of Transport announced this at today’s press conference. The state is to be aided by investments from private companies and bonds from the State Fund for Transport Infrastructure.
    The originally planned year of 2020 was labeled by the ministry as "a financially unsecured assumption." "Given the increasingly limited resources, we must make institutional measures that will allow the use of effective financial instruments in funding construction," said Minister Gustav Slamečka.
    According to the approved construction schedule for transport infrastructure, approximately 500 billion crowns at today’s prices would be needed for the completion of highways by 2020, but according to current assumptions, only just under 100 billion is available. When accounting for two percent inflation and the reconstruction of the D1 highway, the estimated costs of the realistic scenario are 575 billion crowns.
    "If nothing changes, expenditures will essentially drop to a level only sufficient for maintenance," Slamečka stated. According to the calculations of the Ministry of Transport and the current investment capabilities of the Road and Motorway Directorate, Czech highways would be completed in 2223, which is 200 years later than what the ministry currently presents as a realistic scenario. The year 2223 is thus considered a so-called pessimistic scenario.
    The planned basic network of highways is to include 2,150 kilometers, with 1,100 kilometers completed. The realistic scenario assumes an annual subsidy to the highway system and also to railway corridors of 100 to 125 billion crowns annually, peaking in 2015 and 2016 and then declining to below 80 billion by 2025. "If the government seriously says it does not want to invest such money, then it must state that highways will not be completed until at least 2050," Slamečka noted.
    The subsidy is expected to be reduced by public-private partnership (PPP) projects, under which private companies would invest in highways, as well as by bonds from the State Fund for Transport Infrastructure or related organizations. PPPs are expected to be used first for the repair of the D1 highway and the completion of the D3 highway between Veselí nad Lužnicí and České Budějovice.