Breaking out the Bikes

The weather's been brilliant this week -- the first real spring weather this season. But it was a long, long time in the coming. Hungary had more precipitation in the first quarter of 2013 than it's had since 1911. The last snow fell just a couple weeks ago. So when the sun came out this week, people started biking like they might not get another chance. And who knows if they will? We've  had summers in recent years that never really materialised.

Anyway, this was the scene Thursday morning on the Buda korzó bike path on the north side of the Margit híd tunnel.  The first bike jams of 2013.

Could be a stutter start for spring, though. The forecast's calling for rain -- which will be less than optimal for the Critical Mass on Saturday. However, the predicted high temperature, 21 C, will be balmy compared to what Budapest had until a week ago. So the prognosis is still good.

Long-awaited break through

I was away on holiday and I missed it -- the long-awaited, permanent (knock on wood) opening of the Buda Quay bike tunnel under Margit Bridge. This morning on my regular commute, I started taking the customary detour around the tunnel -- and then I noticed that the chain-link fence across the opening of the tunnel had been removed. And cyclists were actually going into it. I guess things do happen to those who wait.

Of course, the bike path on the bridge deck is still a work in slow, agonising progress ...

Permit at the End of the Tunnel

The long-awaited opening of the cycling tunnel under the Buda bridgehead of Margit híd may yet happen before the end of summer.

This would be a big relief to bike commuters who are now forced to make a death-defying detour into motor traffic.

According to an article in index.hu, the tunnel, which to all appearances seems finished and ready for traffic, cannot be opened due to bureaucratic reasons.

There is a long-winded explanation in this article that I had a hard time deciphering with my "alapfokú" Hungarian. But as far as I could understand, due to the fact that the bridge renovation is a year behind schedule, the government couldn't get a permit from ... the government ... and although the tunnel looks complete, there is műszaki tartalom ("technical content," according to Google Translate) which is not visible to the naked eye, and this has to be checked out by expertly enhanced eyes, and then, if the tunnel passes muster, it might be opened as early as mid-August.

The same goes for the Margit Island stop of the 4-6 tram. Or at least I think it does.

Path to Perdition

There's been another delay in what has to count as one of slowest road-work projects in Budapest history. The paving of the bike-pedestrian path on the upper Buda bank has been left half finished because of a hold-up involving a permit from a District I arborist.

The path (between Margit and the Chain bridges) was torn up 2-3 years ago for a project involving the reconstruction of the adjacent tracks for the 19 and 41 trams.

About a year ago, work on the track bed was completed, but the path was left unfinished. In fact, it was left in worse condition than before the work started. A trench had split the path up the middle for installation of utilities and, for reasons I never understood, the contractor didn't repave the path after the lines were laid. Instead, he did an improvised patch job with asfalt in some places and concrete in others. It was a shoddy job and made riding on the path dangerous, particularly for children or after dark. It was said to be temporary situation, but as I say, that was a year ago.

This spring, crews started in a proper resurfacing, but when they disappeared, the path -- amazingly -- was in worse shape yet. I took my first ride on it two weeks ago only to discover that the smooth new tarmac was interrupted, about every 20 metres or so, by 10-metre sections of dirt. The tarmac segments are about 6 cm higher than the dirt parts and the edges are abrupt -- sharp even. If you're not careful, you could easily dent a rim getting up from dirt to tarmac, which is why a lot of cyclists avoid the path altogether and ride instead on the tram tracks.

According to an article on Index.hu, the reason these sections have been left unpaved is because they have been designated as tree planting sites. And before the tarmac can be laid alongside a tree bed, a permit must be obtained from a tree expert at the District I local authority.

You would have thought these permits would have been sorted long ago. But they weren't, so the contractor was forced to go ahead and pave what he could with the intention of doing the rest once the permits are obtained.

Despite all this, the contractor has told Index.hu that he'll finish the bike path by the project's finishing deadline on July 31. However, it was not certain whether the permits will be in the offing that soon.

Street Work Leaves Bike Path in Worse Shape

Arriving back to Budapest from summer vacation, I was pleased to see that the Buda-side korzó, after months of being ripped up due to road work, was again open for cycling. I was down there with my four-year-old boy, Lance, who started riding without training wheels just this spring. As Lance is still a little wobbly on his pint-sized one-speed, the korzó is the safest place for him to ride in our neighbourhood.

During the road work (involving a reconstruction of the No. 19 tram line which runs alongside the korzó), we'd limited our ride from Margit híd to Batthyányi tér. But this morning, seeing that the mess along the tram line was cleared up, we ventured on past Batthyányi toward the Chain Bridge.

I immediately noticed that the patchwork they'd done following the construction was awful. During the project, they'd dug a trench about 30-40 cm wide right down the middle of the korzó to install a rain gutter. After filling it in, they capped it not with tarmac, which is what the path is surfaced with, but with concrete. Not everywhere, though. In scattered segments, for some reason, they filled it with asphalt.

At any rate, the job was incredibly shoddy, the worst part being the deep grooves along the seam between the old surface and the patchwork. As any cyclist knows, these kinds of longitudinal grooves are a major hazard, as bike tires are prone to slide into them and throw you off balance. In the 8 years I've been riding in Budapest, I've had three fairly nasty falls, two of them because of these sorts of patches.

No sooner did I take note of this crappy patch job than Lance goes tumbling over his handlebars after getting his tire caught in one of these grooves. Luckily, his injuries were only a scraped knee and scuffed-up palms. He cried a little bit but dusted himself off and got back on his bike. Even so, it's hard
to overstate how angry I got that the city thinks so little of its cycling (and walking and skating) citizens, that they would do such a half-assed patch job on one of our main promenades.
Hundreds, and on summer weekends, thousands, of citizens use this path each day, not just for recreation, but increasingly for daily transportation. With all the cracks, tree-root bumps and poorly done patches, the korzó is long overdue for a complete resurfacing. The work on the adjacent tram track provided a prime opportunity for such a renewal. Instead, the work finished with the path in an even more degraded state.

I keep reading about City Hall's progressive plans to double cycling's modal share and launch a world-class bike sharing system. Meanwhile, it can't manage such a basic task as bike-path maintenance. It seems to me that the cycling movement goes forward in Budapest not because of City Hall's efforts but despite them.

Shared-use paths stink!

Although it seems that crap weather has driven most of Bp's cyclists back to wherever they came from, this coming week -- at least officially -- is a week to celebrate cycling and all other non-car modes of transport. The main events will happen this weekend (Sept 20-21) with booths and activities set up on Andrássy út for Mobility Week.

Of course, there's Critical Mass on Monday, Sept. 22. But as a teaser to that, some demonstrator types are getting together tomorrow (Sept. 17 from 6 p.m.) to form a bicycle chain on the Buda korzó between Batthyanyi ter and the Chain Bridge. Check the Hungarian announcement.

The point is to protest shared-use paths as a dangerous and inconvenient type of bicycle infrastructure. It's been estimated that at least two thirds of Budapest's bicycle infrastructure are this kind of path -- where cyclists and pedestrians (and baby strollers, roller bladers, dogs, ferrets, etc.) vie for the same space, and end up getting to their destinations late and full of contempt for one another.

This is the main drawback with Budapest cycling infrastructure, and the Buda korzó, which is popular with both weekend strollers and speeding cyclists, is a prime example of why shared-use paths don't work.