Highways in the Czech Republic



Highways in the Czech Republic are managed by the state-owned Directorate of Highways and Motorways of the Czech Republic – ŘSD ČR. The ŘSD currently (september 2022) manages and maintains 1,355 km of motorways (dálnice) and the national speed limit is 130 km/h with an expectation that limit will be increased for some sections to 150 km/h (93 mph). The length of the motorway network is planned to be expanded to 2,000 km by 2030.

Road categories
There are 2 main categories of state-owned roads in Czech Republic: motorways (dálnice) and highways (silnice).

Motorways (Dálnice)
This is the highest category of roads in the Czech Republic. Their start and end are marked by green motorway signs and the informational signs on them and leading to them are green. Their road numbers are displayed on a red background. An electronic vignette is compulsory on motorways unless stated otherwise. The speed limit on motorways is 130 km/h.

Highways (Silnice)
This category contains all remaining state-owned roads. Highways have blue informational signs placed on them and their road numbers are 1-99 displayed on a blue background. No electronic vignette is needed on highways, only truck electronic toll is on selected highway sections. The speed limit on all roads is 90 km/h, with dual carriageways having the same 90 km/h speed limit unless stated otherwise.

Road for motorcars (Silnice pro motorová vozidla)
Some sections of highways have their start and end marked by blue road for motorcars signs. These are grade-separated dual-carriageway highways with a speed limit of 110 km/h unless stated otherwise. As they form parts of existing highways and are not a road system on their own, they do not have any specific numbering system. Thus blue informational road signs and road numbers on blue background are used on them same as for any other highway.

Other roads
Remaining roads with road numbers of 3 or more digits on blue background are owned and maintained by regions or local municipalities. In some major cities, road for motorcars can be designated on them with a city speed limit of 80 km/h.

Motorcars up to 3.5 tonnes
Each vehicle needs to purchase time-based fee, also known as electronic vignette, before entering the motorway. This can be paid online or in selected official selling places with validity of 1 day (200 CZK) 10 days (270 CZK), 1 month (410 CZK) or 365 days (2300 CZK). The price of the vignettes are reduced by half for cars with LPG/CNG or biomethane costing 100, 130, 200 and 1150 CZK, respectively. For plug-in hybrids the cost is roughly quarter of the price for ICE cars 50, 60, 100 and 570 CZK, respectively. However, there are many unofficial websites and unofficial selling places which may charge extra fees or provide bad exchange rates.

Electronic vignettes replaced the windscreen toll vignette (dálniční známka or dálniční kupón) in 2021.

A green motorway road sign means that a paid e-vignette toll is obligatory unless stated otherwise (usually sections from the border to the closest exit or close to large cities). Only sections not subject to e-vignette are designated with an additional road sign (see below).

For 2023, the following motorway sections are subject to the time-based electronic vignette duty for motor cars up to 3.5 t:

Vehicles over 3.5 tonnes
As of 1 January 2007 a new system of electronic toll aka a distance toll for vehicles with a weight exceeding 12 tons has been introduced for motorways and some roads of the first class (silnice první třídy), totally cca 200 km. As of 1 January 2010, this applies also to vehicles over 3.5 tons. There is an ongoing public discussion on imposition of electronic toll for all cars and vehicles.

Before the Second World War
The first informal plan for a motorway (first called in Czech autostráda or dálková silnice) in Czechoslovakia date back to 1935. This was to link Prague through Slovakia with the easternmost Czechoslovak territory, Carpathian Ruthenia (now Zakarpattia Oblast in Ukraine). The terminus was to be at Velykyy Bychkiv (Velký Bočkov in Czech) on the Romanian border. The definitive route, including a Prague ring motorway, was approved shortly after the Munich Agreement on 4 November 1938, with a planned speed limit of 120 km/h.

The Nazi authorities also made the second Czecho-Slovak Republic, already a German satellite state, build a part of the Reichsautobahn Breslau - Vienna as an extraterritorial German motorway with border checkpoints at each motorway exit. However, only a construction of the route within Bohemia and Moravia was initiated, but never finished. It still sporadically appears in some current Czech motorway plans.

On 1 December 1938 Nazi Germany had already initiated a construction of the so-called Sudetenautobahn (in Sudetenland, before the Munich agreement part of Czechoslovakia, then of Germany) in the route Streitau (Bavaria) – Eger – Carlsbad – Lobositz – Böhmisch Leipa – Reichenberg (capital of Sudetenland) – Görlitz (in Prussia, now in Saxony). The autobahn has never been finished, but some remnants in the landscape close to Pomezí nad Ohří, Cheb/Eger and Liberec/Reichenberg are still prominent and an unfinished part from Svárov via Machnín to Chrastava was used in the construction of the I/35 road.

Nazi occupation
Czechoslovakia was broken up with a declaration of independence by the Slovak Republic and by the short-lived Carpatho-Ukraine which was a prelude to the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia on 15 March 1939. It was decided to build the motorway only as far as the Slovak border. The technical parameters of motorways (speed limit of 140 – 160 km/h) were adjusted to those of the German Reichsautobahn, as Czech (Bohemian-Moravian) motorways were to be integrated within the German Reichsautobahn network.

The project for the first segment Prague - Lužná was ready in January 1939, and construction in Moravia began on 24 January in Chřiby on the Zástřizly - Lužná segment. The construction in Bohemia from Prague began on 2 May 1939, with a switch to right-hand traffic in Bohemia and Moravia having already gone without a hitch. The motorway should have reached Brno in 1940, but building materials and labour shortages due to an absolute priority given to the Nazi armament industry delayed the work considerably. The construction in the route of approx. 77 km from Prague towards Brno advanced notably, but a prohibition of all civil constructions by the German authorities came into force in 1942.

After the Second World War
After the Second World War, the completion of only the first and unfinished 77 km of the motorway Prague – Brno as far as Humpolec was approved by the Government in November 1945 and was reinaugurated in 1946. The part-built construction sites of the Sudetenautobahn (28 km) were completely abandoned, as well as that of the Breslau – Vienna motorway (84 km). The latter was, however, incorporated in some plans as a future connection motorway between Brno and the D35 motorway. The 77 km of the Prague – Humpolec motorway had been completed except for some large bridges and a concrete surface when the new communist government decided to discontinue the work completely in early 1950.

Only on 8 August 1967 the Government of the Socialist Republic of Czechoslovakia resolved to continue the construction of motorways by adopting a new motorway plan for the whole country and resolved to continue the already twice interrupted construction of the motorway Prague - Brno (number D1) and further Brno - Bratislava (D2). The construction was solemnly inaugurated on 8 September 1967. Due to a change of technical parameters, some bridges finished before 1950 were replaced. The Prague - Brno motorway (D1), initiated on 2 May 1939, reached Brno in 1980, a full 40 years after the originally scheduled opening.

The pace of construction of motorways has always been rather slow up to the present day. The first 100 km of motorways on the territory of today's Czech Republic were completed in 1975, 500 km in 1985 and 1,000 km in 2007. Funding for the construction of motorways was radically reduced after the financial crisis in 2008 due to draconian budget cuts, and is currently gaining momentum rather slowly for various reasons.

Motorways
The motorways in the Czech Republic, dálnice (abbr. D) are dual carriageways with an emergency hard shoulder. The default speed limit is 130 km/h or 81 mph, which can be locally raised by a sign to 150 km/h or 93 mph since January 2024. Their highway shields are white on red and road signs are white on green. As of February 2024, the Czech motorway network comprises 18 motorways. Nowadays, 17 of them are at least partially operational, but only 6 (D2, D5, D8, D10, D46 and D56) have been completed, another two (D1 and D4) have their final stretch in construction.

The number of a motorway reflects the number of the former highway alongside which it was built up or which it shall replace. After the construction of the motorway, the affected highway is degraded to a regional road with a number beginning with 6 and having 3 digits, in the format 6xx. For instance, after the completion of the D8 motorway (Prague – Lovosice), the previous highway I/8 between Prague and Lovosice became a regional road 608. Regional roads are maintained by the self-governing regions) and not by the state directly.

Originally, motorway D47 was planned from Brno to Ostrava and construction in the section Lipník nad Bečvou - Ostrava started under this number, but in the end the ŘSD in 2006 decided that the D47 should be classified as an extension of the D1 motorway.

Roads for motorcars


Road for motorcars do not form a network on their own, they are just upgraded sections of regular highways. Roads for motorcars are not subject to tolls for vehicles with total weight up to 3.5 t. The signs on roads for motorcars consist of white text on a blue background, like on other highways and unlike on motorways, where the background is green. Exits, like on motorways, are usually numbered. The speed limit is 110 km/h.

List of completed roads for motorcars
Planned upgrade to road for motorcars:
 * I/7 Spořice - Křimov
 * I/13 Chomutov - Teplice (some parts)
 * I/13 Ostrov - Karlovy Vary
 * I/11 Ostrava-Vítkovice - Šenov
 * I/14 Liberec: interchange I/35 - roundabout Kunratice (direction Jablonec n. N.)
 * I/35 roundabout Hrádek nad Nisou - Liberec, interchange Hodkovická St.(inc. border road, only a single carriageway road)

Opening of new motorways
Construction of new motorways in recent years has been hampered due to corruption scandals and austerity measures as well as owing to new European rules under which old EIA assessments lapsed. See the table below. However, this should improve slightly in next years. By the end of 2017, there were 58.2 km of new motorways under construction, in 2018 a construction of further 130.3 km should be initiated (apart from the ongoing reconstruction of the motorway D1). Nonetheless, only 18.1 km of new motorways may open to public in 2018, 18.8 km in 2019 and 29.7 in 2020.

While in 2021 47 km of new motorways were opened, in 2022 it was 21 km but in 2023 it was only 15.4 km.

Between 1971 and 2014 the average year pace of completion of new motorways was 28.2 km a year.