Road and Motorway Directorate of the Czech Republic together with the Czech Waze community and Israeli Waze company work on the deployment of Waze Beacons in Brno tunnels. The purpose of the beacons is to provide the driver’s location inside a tunnel. This action extends the successful cooperation from May 2018 when Waze Beacons were installed in Jihlava tunnel and introduced for the first time.
Most drivers receive penalty points for speeding, failure to wear the seat belt and for driving with the mobile phone in their hands. Last year 395,000 offences and criminal acts, for which drivers got penalty points, were registered last year. The register currently lists 6.8 million drivers, of which seven percent have at least one penalty point, i.e. every 14th driver. This is the output from an analysis of the penalty point system for 2018, prepared by the Transport Research Centre.
The motorway fee can be paid in an electronic system. The law amendment on roads, passed by the government and going to the parliament, will allow this Payments for motorway use on the internet or via a mobile app shall start in 2021. The annual ticket will still cost CZK 1500, so the upper limit is not going up.
The Austrian Motorway and Road Administration Authority Asfinag will give advice on the introduction of an electronic motorway toll collection system. It will provide consultations to the State Fund for Transport Infrastructure (SFDI) which is planning to launch the so-called videotolling from 2021. This is what the Czech transport minister Dan Ťok agreed with his Austrian counterpart Norbert Hofer today in Prague.
The Ministry of Transport published the final wording of the feasibility study on the Danube-Odra-Elbe canal. Preparations of the material for a negotiations for the government are also under way The economic assessment showed that the Danube-Odra branch shall be further investigated, while the Elbe branch is the most expensive one and undermines the effectiveness of the entire canal. The feasibility study evaluates the benefits of an investment amounting to CZK 585 billion.