Prague is good in everything - great transport, big budget, many cafes. But there's one thing in Prague, and in Moscow, and in Paris, and in general in many places, that annoys me.
You probably thought, since I dragged in Moscow with Paris, it's all about migrants. They rage and commit crimes in Prague.
But no. There's something worse. It's about fools and roads, again.
It's commonly believed that roads are a derivative of fools, but I think differently. Drivers become beaten-up fools precisely because someone smart built a bunch of roads in the middle of the city for "convenience".
I'm a militant pedestrian. The noise of cars terribly annoys me. I get bombed when another driver doesn't even think of slowing down seeing a zebra crossing. I don't understand at all how you can drive faster than 30 km/h in the city center.
Everything in Prague is good, but unfortunately, long straight highways pass right through the very center.
Any road on which a person can accelerate forces the person to accelerate. Adrenaline and herd feeling work. Remember yourself, how fun it is to ride a bike down a hill. The same happens with every driver in a car when they see a straight road ahead.
On the other hand, noise doesn't annoy me as much as one of the externalities of such urban planning decisions. Long straight roads have one feature - pedestrians don't like to walk there. No pedestrians - no business for them. No business - no life on the street.
The highway passing by Wenceslas Square is especially annoying. It just cuts off half the city from the crowd of tourists happily walking along the magnificent pedestrian Wenceslas Square. In Moscow, of course, the situation is even worse, you can take any "avenue" as an example, it's quiet horror.
There's also another thing. The absolute majority of Czech drivers are exactly the same assholes as their colleagues in Russia. And I understood this from the very first days in Poděbrady, where even if you jump on a zebra crossing, hell who will slow down.
That's why when I become mayor of Prague, first of all I'll spend a lot and demolish these highways to hell. Thank God, by that time cars will drive themselves, so drivers won't arise. But the city will gain a couple more living veins.
PS and if someone thinks that without roads he's nowhere and in general, this is all right, otherwise how to get to work without comfort - I advise to get to Budapest or Vienna and see how it works there. An especially bright example is Budapest, where cars in the center practically don't accelerate and give way absolutely everywhere, even where there are no crossings at all. I, taught by the bitter experience of Prague and Moscow, didn't understand at all how to cross when there's not a single zebra and only then it dawned that cars in the center are always ready to slow down and let you pass.