Ostrava/Prague - Say you want to try how fast your new car can go. What do you do? It is easy - you just rent a state highway for yourself. It is apparently possible in the Czech Republic, and you do not even have to pay.
They call it exhibition and if you manage to arrange one, you can drive your Porsche down the newly built stretch of highway. And you can bring along your whole family.
At least that is what it looks like. And The Ministry of Transportation does not deny it knows about this practice, which has been introduced by the private companies that build highways with the state funding.
At the same time, the ministry says it cannot do anything against it.
Nice afternoon
The latest to attempt breaking a speed-record in his Ferrari on highway D47 between Rudná and Bohumín was the famous ice-hockey player Pavel Kubina.
Ostravské dopravní stavby, a company which is to turn the newly built highway stretch over to the state soon, let him use it, stopping the construction work for the time.
The rest of the motorized public will start using the road by the end of the year.
The Toronto Maple Leafs´ defender wanted to see if his new Ferrari can exceed 300 kilometers per hour. "I am glad I could come here for a ride with my dad and some friends. It was a nice afternoon," he was quoted by the Czech press.
"It was a fabulous ride," said father of the 2004 Stanley Cup winner with a smile. "Maybe we can give it another go next year, perhaps at a different stretch. But we simply have to beat the 300kph," he said for Právo daily.
Another nearly successful assault on the said limit was recently unleashed at the same highway section by decathlon athlete Roman Šebrle and his Audi R8, claims another daily.
Good publicity
Pavel Vítek, the CEO of the company, says these undertakings are done for the sake of publicity as the new highways get free promotion.
"We offered these two kilometers of the highway for free. At least people will know the work there has been finished," he told Aktuálně.cz.
The public was not invited though, only journalists. "It would have posed a problem for us, there would have been a risk of injury. We had to secure the portion of the highway to make sure no one was at risk, including Mr. Kubina. The information will get to the people anyway," says Vítek.
There is to be another event organized by the company in September, this time for the children. "If you really wanted to take a ride on the highway, you could. Everybody does it anyway. There is no fence, so people come for a ride with a bike or rollerblades and we have to chase them away since we are responsible for the safety and security," he adds.
Ministry: No use to change the law
The Ministry of Transportation spokesman Karel Hanzelka says the highways are a property of the construction company until they are turned over to the investor, meaning the Road and Motorway Directorate (ŘSD).
"And (until that point) they are not even subject to the road traffic law or speed limits. So even if we objected to this practice (of road "exhibition"), we have neither right nor tools to prevent it," argues Hanzelka.
If any potential earnings from renting the highways built for the tax-payers´ money were to go to the state coffers, the law would probably have to change, according to the ministry. That would officially legalize the road-renting.
"The amount of money, which would be earned in this way, remains questionable. When you consider the yearly total sum of investment going into transportation infrastructure building, the income from these exhibition events would represent merely a drop in the ocean," opines Hanzelka.
You can see the article in its Czech original here.
