Experts Find New Solutions within “Prague without Barriers” Project (Portal of Prague)

Within the “Prague without Barriers” project, an office has been established in the main building of the City Hall in Jungmannova Street, to collect proposals from disabled people to improve life in the city. We asked what issues people come to the office with. The answer came from Michal Prager, representative of the “Asistence” association, who is also a member of the expert group within the “Prague without Barriers” project.

“Disabled people address us with various problems, especially regarding transport, for example they propose routes for low-floored public transport or different transport schedules which would be more convenient for disabled people, but they also suggest repair work at bus stops etc. Surprisingly, I have yet to come across a topic other than transport.”

How do you cooperate with City Hall?

The simple fact that we have our own office shows a good relationship, and the working group for “Prague without Barriers” is beginning to achieve really good results on the basis of very fruitful cooperation. This is because the group includes not only people from City Hall, but also – and I’d like to express my thanks to them – e.g. Mr. Dohnal from Prague Public Transport Co. Inc., Mr. Prokel from Ropid, we communicate a lot with Councillor Mareček, and we work very well with people from the transport department - Mr. Šíma and others. In general, the transport department is extremely accommodating towards us.

What results has the expert group achieved?

Opening this office was one step, but thanks to the group’s intervention some projects for better access to the Metro have developed. This is a prospect for the next five years, when 1.3 billion CZK will be invested in disabled access. In my opinion, the most important fact is that money was budgeted for it. This is the greatest achievement of the working group. Moreover, we have started working with other projects abroad and, of course, we copy their good ideas.

Can you say what inspired you abroad?

Besides other things, the knowledge that it’s right to create an integrated concept of access to the town, and then develop the details.

What other specific outputs has the expert group achieved?

Even before it was developed, we discussed access to Chodov Metro station, and it’s now being built, though from European funds. It’s important, a great many disabled people live there. Národní třída should follow, that’s 50% financed so far, and the next projects in the investment plan are the Anděl and I.P.Pavlova stations, although these will be technically very difficult to adapt and financially demanding. For a long time it was thought they could not be made accessible. Even this is a good result of the expert group – that the issue has been raised again and that, thanks to Metroprojekt, studies have been carried out to confirm that these stations can be adapted, using new technology, for disabled access.