5. We want to drive to Prague. What are the problems and where do we find secure parking?

While it's wonderful to have a car to explore the Czech Republic, Hedgie does not recommend that you drive in Prague itself. We hope your question sensibly implies that, once here, you will park and enjoy the city's excellent public transportation.

The problems with driving in Prague are:

  • understanding signs written in Czech
  • coping with heavy traffic
  • finding parking
  • avoiding the theft of your car or of your valuables in it
  • getting traffic tickets, parking tickets, or "the boot"
Signs, Lines, and Some Czech
Czech is a Slavic language, so it's a little difficult to "wing it" if you only know Latin and Germanic roots. Fortunately, while you are actually driving, signs are usually the standard International symbols for "Do Not Enter," "One Way," "No Stopping or Standing," etc., though these may be foreign to Americans. If you don't know the meaning of the crucial sign pictured here, you must study!

Of course, you will need to know the place names in Czech, not their translations, if you are looking for the Old Town (Stare Mesto) or Little Quarter (Mala Strana), for example. You will also need to cope with directional signs in the city center that point you toward Brno, Plzen, or Teplice, towns far from Prague.

It's when you get ready to park on the street that you may encounter very long chatty signs in Czech. We will not try to coach you on these. Fortunately, two easy words tell you that you should not park in a particular spot: "Reserve" and "Neparkovat." (Ne means "no" either by itself or as a prefix.) "Mimo" implies another negative as far as you are concerned; it means "except" as in "entry or parking prohibited 'except' for authorized vehicles." What days do the limitations apply? "Po-Pa" means Monday through Friday. "So" is the abbreviation for Saturday, and "Ne" in this context is the abbreviation for Sunday or "nedele" (literally "no work"). End of Czech lesson!
(Or see Learning Czech: Hedgie's 10 Minute Tips, a lesson for the curious.)

Another "no parking" indicator, especially in the historic areas, is the heavy blue line on the pavement about a car's width or length from the curb. That means any vacant place you see there is reserved for residents who have purchased a permit, and you'll get "the boot"(see photo below) if you're caught parking there.

The True "Ring" Story
Prague has no "ring roads" as such. If your map shows a highlighted road around the city, this is actually a string of clumsily-connected segments of city streets meant to help the desperate circumnavigate the center. Good luck figuring out how to get from one segment to the next! Hedgie and others have found several black holes where you may get lost for hours. Confident residents have merely memorized their routes. See our driving to Prague section for tips.

The Prague Auto Game Challenge
Driving in Prague is a bit like driving in a video game where you don't quite understand all the rules. Common practices such as speeding through crosswalks, making U-turns at intersections with stoplights, backing down an entire block of a one-way street to nab a parking space, parking on sidewalks and crosswalks, making left turns where it's prohibited, are actually forbidden. This makes it difficult to figure out what the rules really are just by watching the locals! And just because a local person does it, doesn't mean the visitor can also escape a fine.

Our advice:

  1. Do everything to avoid unnecessary driving in the city, through it, or around it. Take the Metro, a tram, or a cab wherever and whenever you can. (See our advice on taxis.) Note: Often a tram or the Metro is a far faster way to get to that opera, concert, or play in the center on time than a taxi.
  2. When driving, the minute you realize you made a wrong turn, make a U-turn and get back on track, if you can. You may even see the well-worn tracks where thousands of others have made the same U-turn.
  3. To avoid hours in traffic jams, make your trips weekdays before 7am or on weekends before Sunday afternoon at 4 p.m when residents are returning from weekends away.
  4. Buy an excellent detailed map of the city. Hedgie's preference is the booklet of maps "Praha a okoli" by KartoGrafie Praha with a scale of 1:15000, ISBN 80-7011-710-9. Another good driving map is the fold-out type:"Okoli Prahy, Praha," ISBN 80-7224-263-6, by the same company.

Avoiding Theft
Many visitors are overly anxious about having their car stolen and make themselves miserable worrying that their 10 year old car will vanish if they leave it on the street for an hour. It's far more likely it will be "booted" for incorrect parking. The main targets for thieves, as in most countries, are the new, expensive, "high end" makes and models. New Skodas are also popular targets. In spite of this, one sees new Mercedes', BMWs, and Skodas parked everywhere.

Car radios are a prime target, however. Ditto anything you leave inside. You may find your car open, as if you left it unlocked, with all your items gone. Don't leave them there!

You will see vehicles on the street with both car alarms and "the Club." Some cars also have a hidden lock to disable the ignition. As in other countries, if a car alarm goes off accidentally it arouses more irritation than action. As elsewhere, professional thieves who are after your radio/CD or valuables work so quickly that they are gone before anyone responds.

Be aware that events attracting a high numbers of visitors will attract a proportional number of thieves who watch what you leave in your car.

That said, where does one park?

Finding Secure Parking
The first and most obvious place to find secure parking is your hotel. If you have not yet selected a hotel, choose one which has such parking. If it is a small hotel, ask whether they have a secure area; some "boutique" hotels do, though they may not advertise it because space is limited.

The Prague Information Service (PIS) lists several dozen public and guarded car parks throughout the city.

Garages in many areas of the city are not as common and or as well-marked as in other European countries or the United States. Ask your hotel to identify the nearest garage.

More garages are posting information in English these days, but don't count on it. Nor do they all have automatic machines. You may need to have one of those conversations where you speak English, point to the posted sign, and pantomime, and the attendant speaks Czech and does the same.

Prague has a Park&Ride system, shown on this Park&Ride Map It is in Czech, but the P+R symbols are easy to see. This will give you an idea of their general location. To find the garages themselves, you'll need directions from locals once you arrive. The Park and Ride lots are also listed on the same Prague Information Service page as the other parking lots.

Note that parking at the airport, both in the lot in front of the terminal and the economy parking in the nearby building, is paid but not guarded.

If you ignore all our advice about not driving into the historic area, you may find that the old signs which were so cryptic to the non-Czech speaker are beginning to be replaced by metered parking with directions in pictographs and English as well as Czech. These, of course, are for short-term on-street parking only.The city of Prague city has a page in English about parking zones and public lots near the city center.

Tickets and Boots

Visitors can't skip town leaving behind unpaid parking tickets because they are enforced with "the boot," that draconian device attached to one wheel, making it impossible to drive your car. (Bringing your own boot to keep the car from being stolen or to get longer parking time doesn't work, unfortunately. It's been tried!)

Traffic tickets for moving violations must also be paid on the spot. You pay the officer in cash and you should be given a receipt.

Relative to Western European and American fines for similar offenses, Czech fines were once quite low. Not any more. Top fines are now 50,000 Czk. If you get one, find out the offense. Have the officer draw a diagram if necessary. You don't want to repeat it!

Tips to avoid being ticketed:

  • The rules for driving where trams are routed are complex. Sometimes you need to, and are allowed to, drive on the tracks; in other places this is prohibited. At some types of tram stops, all vehicles must stop when the tram does; at others, they need not stop. Watch carefully what the majority of other cars are doing.

  • Be sure you have your highway-use stamp in the lower right corner of your front windshield. Have all your other documents in order and handy. Pairs or small groups of officers may flag you down at checkpoints to inspect these.

  • Use your headlights during daylight hours. This is now mandatory all year.
  • Use snow tires from roughly November 1 until spring has really arrived. Cobbles and tram tracks can be extremely slippery in winter. In the ecologically-protected areas of the countryside, salt is not used on the roads in winter, only sand and gravel.

  • Wear your seat belt.

  • Absolutely do not drink any alcoholic beverage at all before driving. There is ZERO tolerance here.

  • At "zebra" pedestrian crossings, you must stop for pedestrians. This is now being enforced more strictly.

  • Most vehicles are prohibited from driving in portions of the Old Town itself. Don't try it. Park in the garage at the National Theatre or the one near the Rudolfinum.
Driving to Prague: The Easiest Way to Enter the City
By far the easiest way to enter Prague is via the D1, also known as E50/E65, the freeway from Brno. If you can plan this as your entry point, you'll have many fewer headaches. Luckily, the D1 is the freeway most visitors use when coming from Vienna or Bratislava, and the E55 from Ceske Budejovice and Linz joins it just 30 kilometers before it enters Prague. You will be funneled in onto the "magistrala" that goes through the center of Prague.
Conclusion and Summary
From the above, you may conclude that for greatest ease and peace of mind, if you are driving to Prague you should not rent the flashiest high-end model vehicle, should choose a hotel that has its own guarded parking, should enter via the Brno freeway, should park in a secure lot, and should use public transport.

 
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