Roadside billboards to stay 10 more years

After setting ambitious goals last year, Transport Ministry officials have backtracked on a plan to limit advertising billboards along highways, which is now unlikely to take effect for nearly a decade.

Roadside billboards total more than 2,200 nationwide, and in August 2010 officials announced the intention to remove some 400 this year, along with 500 more in 2012 (See "Highway billboards to come down," The Prague Post, Aug. 18, 2010). Before making the announcement, however, it seems the ministry forgot to read through the contracts between billboard owners and the Czech Road and Motorway Directorate (ŘSD) and to see when they expired. Many extend indefinitely.

"Our original plan to end contracts through the ŘSD did not let them disappear as fast as we expected," said Transport Ministry spokesman Jakub Ptačinský. "So far, 27 billboards have been pulled down in cases where the owner did not have the appropriate permission."

Compounding the confusion are new contracts finalized after the government announced its intention to remove some billboards.

"The last big problem arose when the leaving director of the ŘSD hastily extended some contracts," said ŘSD spokeswoman Nina Ledvinová.

The Transport Ministry, now led by its third minister in a year, is preparing a law that would require billboards be at least 250 meters from the road when outside of cities. No new contracts with advertising companies will be concluded, and all existing contracts will be voided within 10 years. The ministry also plans to strip the ŘSD of its ability to approve billboard contracts.

News Outdoor, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, controls about 80 percent of Czech billboard space, and the spread of roadside billboards has it roots in the free-wheeling economics of the 1990s, which saw the government approve billboards as close as 10 meters from the side of the road. While current law requires crash barriers alongside roads to prevent crashes into billboards, in most places they are missing. Nearly 10 motorists per year die from hitting a billboard. Studies show a three-second glance at a billboard while driving at 130 km/h equates to driving about 70 meters without looking.

"Everyone knew billboards were set to disappear already in 1994, when the government issued the first resolution about their gradual disappearance," said Vojtěch Razima with Acta non verba, a citizens' group opposing billboards.

"The argument about arbitration [with existing advertisers] is only an excuse. Former minister [Vít] Bárta stopped construction of numerous roads and highways, but nobody worried about arbitration."

Razima said there are other factors to consider, as well.

"Not only do they distract drivers, but they mostly steal our public space," he said. "Safety is important, but the country looks like a country of idiots, burans and Neanderthals and Troglodytes ruled by advertising."

The new plan gives a softer 10-year window for taking down billboards, based on fears of advertiser lawsuits. It grants exceptions to logo signs of buildings including gas stations, motels or restaurants. While the proposal will affect highway billboards, the majority of those in towns are regulated by the municipalities and will remain unaffected.

A recent civic effort in Prague 5 saw the successful removal of a billboard consisting of two 10-meter-tall light-up screens in the protected conservation zone of Buďánka, where communist-era dissidents used to gather. The area was deemed "out of the question for billboard placement," according to the National Heritage Institute.

A hastily organized protest drew Oscar-winning director Jiří Menzel and actor Ivan Trojan and resulted in the complete removal of the billboard under the cover of night.

"This is our public space, and we should be able to decide what goes there. It belongs to no one and everyone at the same time," said Anežka Hradílková, a member of last family residing in Buďánka.

But despite this individual success story, and the Transport Ministry's pledge to move forward on a billboard reduction program, some are growing impatient with the failure of government talk to translate into action.

"Promising the citizens that you will get rid of something, and then allowing it instead, seems to me like a real barbarity," Razima said.

Klára Jiřičná can be reached at
kjiricna@praguepost.com