Mayor's had it with new-fangled transport

BKK executive Vitézy presents alongside his boss, Mayor Tarlos.

For awhile there, it seemed Budapest's buttoned-up mayor, István Tarlos, was embracing a more modern approach to transport. Or if not embracing, at least giving it a cautious hand-shake.

No more. News reports this week say that Tarlos and an ally on the City Assembly have made a move to get operational control over the Budapest Transport Centre, a body created during Tarlos's own tenure to oversee streets and public transport.

The move is seen as a rebuke to the progressive, youthful head of BKK, Dávid Vitézy, who's clashed with Tarlos on a number of decisions. This, of course, doesn't auger well for cyclists -- or any other road users, I'd argue.

Tarlos has been at loggerheads with BKK's 28-year-old chief executive almost from the time BKK was established and Vitézy put in charge in the fall of 2010. Vitézy had sought to counter rising car use in the city by promoting an integrated system based on public transport, walking and cycling.

On the cycling side, Vitézy has supported several positive developments in just the last year. He opened up priority bus lanes to cyclists, saw through a regulation change allowing folding and children's bikes on public transport (without extra fees), and launched a pilot project allowing bicycles on select bus and tram lines in hilly areas. In the last few weeks, BKK has embarked on a work plan to make the downtown area more bike friendly in preparation for the Bubi bike-sharing scheme.

Even so, Vitézy's progressive rhetoric has always outshone his accomplishments. This is because his more far-reaching initiatives aren't support by City Hall.

An early example was in the June 2011, when priority bus lanes were created to speed up buses connecting Budapest to its western suburbs via the M1 motorway. As expected, the move exacerbated car congestion in the first days after it was introduced. It was also expected that this problem would diminish as commuters readjusted their travel habits. But after the local mayor of Budaörs staged a flash press conference at the traffic-clogged M1 entrance, Tarlos immediately caved in and cancelled the new bus lanes, citing "technical problems".

This past summer, the story repeated itself on the Nagykörút. 

A new traffic regime was put in place in February 2012 so that traffic lights prioritised trams rather than cars. This meant trams could get around the körút 2-3 minutes faster than before, and that the number of tram departures per hour jumped from 30 to 32 during peak periods. For passengers, it translated into time saved, less crowded conditions and greater comfort.

In the larger picture, it meant more efficient use of the körút. During peak periods, the road carries about 9,000 tram passengers per hour versus 3,000 cars. With trams carrying two to three times as many people as cars, BKK had clearly favoured the right mode.

Despite this, at the end of August, Mayor Tarlos declared that "in this city, a lot of cars travel and deliberately slowing them down is a professional and political failure." He said he would instruct the Budapest Transport Centre to end tram priority and restore the "green wave" of traffic lights for motorists.

Earlier this month, the Hungarian Cyclists Club wrote Tarlos and open letter asking how this decision and others squared with his once stated aim of giving greater priority to public transport, cyclists and walkers. They raised the issue of Tarlos's characterisation of the nagykörút scheme as a "professional failure." The numbers were clear -- tram priority made sense from a professional point of view, they said.

Tarlos replied that his decisions did not contradict his programme. "The main problem," he said, "is with the pace and intensity of change."

He made a testy comment about the club's reference to professionalism. "I've happened to be engaged in this profession since before Mr. Vitézy was born."

And then added a patronising comment: "I respect the Cycling Club. And I am curious about the cycling club's opinions in cycling matters ...". 

According to the news in caboodle.hu, the mayor has proposed a  reshuffling on BKK's five-member steering board, replacing one member and adding two more. In this way, he'd have more direct operational control over the organisation.

One step forward for Tarlos, a giant leap backward for Budapest.

No bike lanes for Nagykörút

Budapest Mayor István Tarlos with Hernádi Zsolt, president of Bubi's corporate sponsor, MOL oil company.

With time ticking away til the planned April 2014 launch of Bubi – Budapest’s public bike system -- the city is scrambling to make downtown fit for the scheme’s users. A recently announced plan calls for scores of bike-friendly measures covering nine central districts. However, the measures are all small, easy fixes, and, disappointingly, will not include the cycling movement’s biggest priority in recent years – bike lanes around the nagykörút.

The kerékágy blog quotes János László, president of the Hungarian Cyclists Club, which helped draft the work plan. László said that the nagykörút lanes would have caused serious conflicts, and that small improvements were simply easier to take up. A statement from the Budapest Transport Center (BKK) says nagykörút bike lanes are “not realistic in current traffic conditions".

The improvements in the plan would cover 120 streets, 60 signaled intersections and 30 segments of main arteries. They comprise inexpensive, relatively easy fixes such as the painting of lanes and chevrons on streets, installing signs indicating the presence of cyclists, and the creation of contraflow lanes on side streets to allow two-way bike traffic on one-way roads.

The plan also calls for expansion of car-restricted zones; installation of bike parking; and traffic calming measures.

The work would start in districts VI and VII so that the entire service area of Bubi – basically everything inside the nagykörút plus the Buda river bank – would be finished before Bubi’s launch. After that, work would continue in districts VIII, IX, XI, I, II, V and XIII.

But, as said, the big banana is off the table.

The nagykörút is the busiest street downtown, and already gets significant bike traffic -- about 1,000 cyclists per day or 6% of motor traffic. With cars frequently moving faster than the posted speed limit, and with no separated lane for cyclists, this creates a hazard.

This past summer, BKK commissioned a feasibility study on new bike facilities on the körút, and the proposed ideas ran the gamut from simple advisory lanes or sharrows (as on Margit híd) to the redesignation of the outside traffic lanes for cyclists only. But even before the ideas were presented for political debate, BKK staff said behind the scenes that bike lanes were a non-starter.

Sure enough, the city’s recent decision was negative. Kerékágy quoted BKK saying:

The possible solutions outlined in the nagykörút study, in which cycling infrastructure displaces an outer traffic lane or parking lane, are not realistic in the current traffic situation. This might be taken up after the introduction of a downtown congestion charge, but on this there’s been no final decision.

The city has postponed introduction of the congestion charge many times, even though it’s obliged to implement it as a condition of EU subsidies for the 4th metro project. But that’s an old story.

The question is whether the quick and easy measures done over the next five months will be adequate preparation for Bubi. The system will have more than 1,000 bikes and 74 stations, all concentrated downtown. One worry is that lack of a sufficiently safe and convenient cycling network will stymie the system’s success. The other is that many of the new users will be people inexperienced in riding in city traffic, and that they’ll be more vulnerable to road accidents.

But at present, the city’s political leaders have decided the prospect of inconveniencing car drivers is a bigger worry than risking death and injury of cyclists.

Price of Procrastination

Hungary could lose EUR 640 million in EU funds for the metro 4 project if it continues to drag its feet on the congestion charge, according to a post this week on caboodle.hu.

According to the report, the Budapest Transport Centre (BKK) now states that it will be impossible to implement the charge until "the city's public transport network is completed". This would happen in 2015, if all goes as planned, and then the congestion charge could be implemented along with a system of peripheral park and rides, in 2016.

But how would the PT network be "completed"?? Isn't public transport a continual work in progress? A completion date strikes me as a phony benchmark, the latest pulled from bottomless barrel of excuses to delay the congestion charge.

Of course, the city leadership is terrified of alienating car owners and is desperate to find another way to tax themselves out of the metro 4 quagmire. A new "utilities tax" will hit landowners whose properties are crisscrossed by water and sewage mains and other infrastructure. Sounds like a soak-the-rich strategy, although everyone will feel the pain, from real estate tycoons on down to shop owners and flat tenants.

With congestion charging, at least you'd have a choice: drive downtown and pay or bike or walk and go for free. Or car pool and split the fee with your colleagues.

Or take BKV, which as of January 1 costs HUF 350 per ticket. That gets expensive, particularly if you have journeys that require a change of lines. Every change costs another HUF 350. This is the subject of another rant. But ... why should a public transport user have to pay an extortionate fee to use an environmentally friendly, space efficient means of travel while car users go for free over the same public roads?