Cycling in Czechia

Result of stupid legislation in Czech Rep: 19 signs on 200 meters

It says to cyclists they have to push the bike as pedestrians every time they cross the side road (entrance to a house for a car). It's not always such "forest of signs" like this one, on most cyclepaths in the country they are only supposed to give way to cars on these side roads. But, unlike other countries, cyclists never have priority (there are expections on really busy cyclepaths crossing side road with low traffic, but always there have to be signs everywhere - explicit stop sign for cars like this one in Prague...).

Another example of forest of signs...

I assume it's up to me to answer in this section .
Bikesharing: To my knowledge there's just one small in one Prague district - Karlín, in operation since 2005 rather as a testing bikesharing for the Homeport company which runs larger bikesharing systems around the world.

http://homeport.cz
There's also one rather guerilla bikesharing system in Prague, Brno, Olomouc and Pardubice called rekola. They have nice system and very cheap pink bikes parking on various places.

http://www.rekola.cz/

Cycling is most popular sport in Czech Republic, but from the most part just for recreation, transport by bicycle in big cities is still rather uncommon. It differs though, there are flat cities like Pardubice and Hradec Králové, which have modal share of cycling about 15 %.
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And there are more smaller cities with population in tens of thousands with significant cycling modal split. Most of them have quite flat landscape.

Regarding infrastructure, it's improving, but we are still waiting for some legislative changes. Overall we're still developing country in conditions for bicycle transport. The positive trend is there, although in few past years it's stagnating in Prague for example. Smaller cities are much more flexible and progressive.
For the past few years hundreds of kilometers of cyclepath were built around the country, most of them are just for cycletourism in countryside. The problem is when these cyclepath collide with roads, then our legislation is obsolete. And in many cities, it's still very difficult even for specialised designers to implement cycling infrastructure into present road system.

Klausenburg said:

What is the situation in Brno? Has cycling got off only in smaller cities, or only Prague lags behind?

Click to expand...

Brno is similar to Prague, there is very slow progress. The problem is not only lack of protected infrastructure for cycling, but no respect for rules by some drivers.
There are some cities (Pardubice, Hradec Králové, Uherské Hradiště), which support cycling quite a lot, especially those where cycling has always been important. The progress is there in the whole country, but could be much bigger. Legislation is obsolate too, even brand new cycling infrastructure doesn't reach standards in Western Europe.

In Prague, the situation may differ across districts. E.g. Prague 7 is doing quite a lot for cyclists. In the city centre, the situation is still quite bad. After Blanka tunnel opening (which has been promoted as solution to Prague traffic problems), nothing has changed in the city centre, congestions are daily on, cars are parking anywhere, police is unable to solve it.
Recently we got this short piece of cycle lane, however some drivers don't respect it and use it as a parking lot. Since these cycle lanes are not connected, cycling in the city is still very rare.

Almost three years after sudden collapse of Trojská lávka pedestrian bridge near Prague ZOO the new one was opened last friday. 256 m long and 4 m wide it will be able to cope with cyclists and pedestrians at the same time. The old one built in 1984 was just cca 3,1 m wide and cyclists were urged to push a bike.