Ribbon cutting for Andrássy bike lanes

If you haven't seen them yet, Tuesday will be an ideal time to check out the new red bike lanes on Andrássy út. The lanes are part of a traffic reconfiguration between Bajcszy-Zsilinszky út and Oktogon. The bike lanes used to run between street parking and the curb. Now the parking spaces and bike lanes have switched places, with cars right next to the curb and cyclists along the edge of the outside traffic lane.

Now that the red paint has dried, a formal ribbon cutting ceremony is scheduled Tuesday afternoon at 2 p.m. at the Opera. Mayor István Tarlos will preside along with head of the Budapest Transport Centre Dávid Vitezy. Critical Mass organiser Gábor Kürti, who spearheaded recent lobbying efforts for the bike lane change, has issued a facebook invite to get cyclists to show their appreciation. He's called for two processions up and down the new lanes -- one immediately after the christening ceremony and another at 5:30 p.m. -- for the sake of working people who can't attend the first.

The new configuration rectifies problems that cyclists had pointed out before bike lanes were first installed on Andrássy in the 1990s. First, the curbside lanes made cyclists vulnerable to getting "doored," not only because they were too close to the parking, but also because people exiting cars on the passenger side are less likely to look over their shoulder before opening the door.

The second issue related to a general problem with cycling accommodation that is hidden from traffic (in this case by a barrier of parked cars). Car drivers aren't aware of the cyclists, so when they cross paths at intersections, motorists are caught by surprise.

When the curbside lanes were created on Andrássy, the prevailing wisdom (i.e., ignorance) held that the safest solution was to separate cyclists from traffic. It was feared that if the bikes lanes ran next to car traffic, cyclists might swerve in front of vehicles, particularly when confronted with opening car doors.

The new arrangement, though, makes this fear seem unwarranted. For one, a gap of about one metre is left between car parking and the bike lanes, which is sufficient clearance to avoid getting doored. For another, when you're on these open bike lanes -- as opposed to being hemmed in between a row of cars and a sidewalk  -- you feel you can see everything, that motorists can see you and that you have room for maneuver if you need it.

Tuesday's bike ride is being called a Happy Mass. It'll be the third such ride after earlier ones celebrating the creation the bike lanes on the Kiskörút and Thököly út. Political lobbying isn't just about petitioning, it's also about honoring those who deliver the goods.

A Subdued Critical Mass Announcement

BLAST FROM THE PAST? This stolen shot is from 2007.
One of CM's main organisers, Gábor Kürti, is riding third from the left.

The coordinates for the fall Budapest Critical Mass have been announced, albeit in an unusually subdued fashion.

According to a post Wednesday morning at criticalmass.hu, the ride starts at 6.30 p.m. September 22 (European Car Free Day, as usual) in front of the Buda Park Stage (Budai Parkszinpad). This is by the Feneketlen tó at Kosztolányi Dezső tér.

The destination will be Heroes' Square and the bike lift will be in front of the Museum of Fine Arts. The post neglects to indicate what time the lift will be. Neither is the route specified, although that does accord with the tradition of the fall CM. As opposed to the spring event, the fall ride doesn't have a police escort and there is no prescribed, cordoned-off parade route. You ride in traffic and are expected to obey traffic rules.

I would expect a more detailed notice to be posted in the coming days on criticalmass.hu, but I'm not certain. As of Monday, the only hint that there was going to be anything was a facebook page that said there would be a ride but, at that point, divulged few other details. The only hint that CM had any future was a survey posted August 24 with questions about people's opinions on about Critical Mass.

As some readers will remember, organisers put up a cryptic post before last spring's ride declaring that it would be the "first last" Critical Mass. At that point it wasn't clear if they were really calling it a day or merely goading participants into pitching in with more support. But over the ensuing months, there were a couple other impromptu rides (one celebrating the opening of the bike lanes on the kiskörút, the other proposing a toast to the new lanes on Margit Bridge). So with with all that activity, it was my impression that things were just going according to routine and I was sort of expecting that this fall's ride would go off as usual.

However, seeing as it is just over two weeks until Car-Free Day and we've still not seen the customary redesign of the CM website, there's been no call for volunteer escorts, and there's been nothing more than a three-line, incomplete post about it -- well, maybe things ARE winding down on the CM front.

I don't have anymore insight on this. We'll see what the coming days have in store ... .

Happy Days

Not even a month has passed since the "last" Critical Mass, and they've already announced the reunion tour.

To be fair, the occasion isn't a proper Critical Mass, but rather a one-off celebration of a welcome addition to Budapest's cycling network: the new bi-directional bike lanes on the kiskörút (Little Ring Road). The whole reconfiguration of this busy thoroughfare looks to be a big improvement for downtown, and the bike lanes -- one on each side of the street next to the curbs -- were included in the plans thanks to vigorous lobbying by the local cycling movement.

Now there are bike lanes on both sides of the kiskörút running from the Szabadság Bridge all the way to Déak tér. I can't recall exactly how much car parking this path has displaced, but it's quite a few spaces, and that fact alone makes this bit of infrastructure ground-breaking by Budapest standards.

Compare that to the bike path that runs north from there down Bajcsy-Zsilinszky to Alkotmány utca. It's on one side of the street only, making it inconvenient for northbound travellers. And the designers, rather than taking away a centimetre of space from this rather capacious urban motorway, decided instead to run it down the the sidewalk -- taking space from pedestrians. It was a wasted opportunity for sustainable mobility, but hopefully, the more enlightened approach on the kiskörút will set an example that future traffic planners will follow.

Now that the kiskörút paths have actually been completed -- and in a fashion conforming to the promised design -- the guys at Hajtas Pajtas bike couriers want to celebrate and give due credit to the city leaders, planners and contractors who brought it to fruition.

The demonstration, dubbed "Happy Mass," will happen Tuesday, May 24. Participants are asked to come down to Károly körút and mass on both sides of the Madach tér crosswalk between 5:45 and 6 p.m. You're supposed to line up along with bike paths along the sidewalks, and then at 6 p.m. there will be a traditional bike lift. After that, for 45 minutes cyclists will ride up and down the new bike paths, with no explicit instructions on how and when to turn and cross the street to double back the other way. The idea is just to occupy the path for awhile, much as last fall's Critical Mass was about occupying the nagykörút.

At 6:45 p.m. Hajtas Pajtas head Gábor Kürti will lead a public discussion about the path and cycling matters in the small auditorium of the Merlin Theatre.

Strained relations

Traffic cops handed out a total of HUF 839,000 (EUR 3,000) in on-the-spot fines to 110 participants in Wednesday's Critical Mass demonstration, according to the Budapest Police.

Police were out in force during the event, most of them stationed in small teams at intersections and flagging over cyclists for checks and interrogations. According to the police, most of the citations were given for running red lights and for riding on tram tracks.

In various news reports, organisers agreed that although many of the citations were probably deserved, they also had heard of reports of cyclists being hassled for not wearing reflective vests, which would be a misapplication of the law (reflective vests are required only for night-time riding on rural roads).

And considering the five-year record of very good cooperation between the city officials and Critical Mass organisers, it struck many as a disheartening change of tone.

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It's probably entirely unrelated, but I was interested to see that Hungarian Cyclists' Club János László was a participant in a separate demonstration just before Critical Mass but involving the same organisers -- leaders of the Hajtas Pajtas bike courier company.

This protest, which was filmed and posted here, concerned City Hall's use of a prime patch of 5th District property as their own personal parking lot. The property, big enough to accommodate two football pitches, sits between City Hall and the kiskörút and north of the Merlin Theatre. With its location in the dead centre of town, I wouldn't be surprised if it's the most expensive vacant lot in Hungary.

The area was once home to a row of shabby looking one-story shops and taverns. These were razed, opening up a vast lot from the kiskörút to City Hall. A couple years ago, a narrow strip along the kiskörút was turned in to a "temporary" park while the rest was sealed from the public with a three-metre fence and put at the mayor's disposal as free parking. (Street parking fees in the neighbourhood run more than HUF 400 per hour.)

The protesters' simple action involved jumping the fence and taking over the property for a short while to blow bubbles, skip rope, throw frisbees, and lay on the grass. They brandished a sign reading "Parkoló" with the "oló" crossed out. (In English "parking lot" with the "...ing lot" crossed out.)

They're right, of course. Downtown suffers from a terrible shortage of parks, which is part of the reason the newish public space at nearby Erzsébet tér got run down so quickly. The demand for open space in downtown greatly exceeds supply. (The other reason is that it was cheaply built, but that's another story.)

Anyway, the protesters made a pertinent point in a funny, clever way -- which seems to be their forté. But I was a little surprised to see János there considering the cycling club he leads gets a good part of its operating budget from City Hall. Biting the hand that feeds, I would have thought.

Then again, with Mayor Demszky out of contention in this season's election and his Free Democrats party in shreds, I suppose this is just one more sign of a closing chapter of city politics.

The Biking Bloc

This year's free-jazz approach to Critical Mass seemed to produce more harmony than discord as far as I could tell. And participation was once again huge, at least 10,000 according to the report by Hungarian wire service MTI. Certainly, Érzsébet tér was swamped with cyclists for the closing bike lift at 8 p.m.

My advance post on the ride was called "Critical Chaos," but this was not descriptive of the event as it happened. Despite having no fixed starting point, and only a crude script calling for people to ride on the Pest side of the Nagykörút starting at 6:30 p.m., most participants rode in an orderly fashion on schedule. There seemed to be heavy bike traffic in both directions over most of the length of the route.

From my limited vantage point, it appeared that the traffic going from Margit bridge to Oktogon was heaviest. The entire curbside lane was packed with cyclists and at some points, we even spilled into the second lane. On any other day, I wouldn't think of taking my 5-year-old boy on the körút. The traffic there is as fast and aggressive as it gets in Budapest. However, Critical Mass offers safety in numbers, so Lance accompanied me on my bike's luggage rack the whole way. Mind you, he has no patience for Critical Mass. To him, this is an event that looks from a distance like a festival, but then upon arrival you see it has no rides or toys. I explain to him that it's a political thing. Lance thinks it's BORING.

Despite the usual civility of the crowd and the effectiveness of the volunteer traffic directors, there were tonnes of police this year. MTI noted that there were police checks at at least 10 intersections and that they were handing out fines as high as HUF 15,000 for not having lights and/or spoke reflectors. Hungarian Cyclists' Club János László lamented a lapse in the traditional good cooperation between organisers and police.

Near Oktogon, I noticed a group of cops questioning some kids on trials bikes -- and I could see that main organiser Gábor Kürti had stopped to mediate. Further on, I observed a group of cops at Blaha Lujza tér stopping cyclists seemingly at random. I don't know if the guy below was guilty of anything, but the cops let him go after a couple minutes of interrogation.

I reckon the city would be remiss if it didn't exert some official control on a demonstration that routinely attracts tens of thousands of people. At any rate, I didn't see any acts of violence by either the cops or participants.

A little while later, we came across Justin Hyatt -- a member of the Young Greens (Zöfi) and a stalwart of the livable-cities movement. He and a fellow activist were in bunny outfits, which provided some welcome comic relief for Lance. They handed me a flier with this URL: www.placcc.hu. More political stuff, apparently, although I didn't tell Lance.

It was getting late so we turned off the körút and headed down Rákóczi út (maybe the only street downtown scarier than the körút) and eventually found our way to the closing bike lift at the Gödör klub. A couple guys with a three-wheel bike taxi emblazoned with a sign saying "Put some fun between your legs!" had some balloons. This salvaged the evening for Lance. It was a shoulder-to-shoulder crowd and Kristin had come with our 4-month-old daughter Sequoia (by stroller, not bike). This was Sequoia's first extra-utero (?) Critical Mass. She did the last one in utero.

Kristin didn't have a bike for the bike lift so she lifted Lance. It's hard to make out, but Lance is spread-eagled here, with one leg above Kristin and the other below. Reminds me of body-surfing photos from my grungy heyday back in Seattle.
After that, the family went home and I hung on to catch the start of the most overtly political part of the evening: mayoral candidates for the fall election were invited for a cycling-focused Q&A -- broadcast on a big screen facing the Gödör's terrace. Apparently, every party sent their candidate except for the odds-on favourite, Fidesz. That candidate, István Tarlos, is apparently confident enough of that he'll win that he didn't bother with a cycling rally of 10,000 people.

Along with the other major party candidates, the LMP's candidate Benedek Jávor was on hand. The kerékagy blog did a run-down of all the parties' cycling platforms and LMP's stood out as the most elaborate and thoughtful.

I don't know about the Socialists' cycling platform but their candidate, Csaba Horváth (below), was at Gödör giving press interviews ahead of the Q&A event. (He didn't take part in the Q&A-- see comments!)

Cyclists Get a Hearing on Bridge Plans -- Today

According to a Tuesday post by Critical Mass organiser Gábor Kürti, the matter of cycling accommodation on Margit híd will be taken up by the city's Operations Committee today (Wednesday). It will involve a consultation with "all concerned parties," according to a statement issued by SZDSZ Assembly Member Imre Lakos.

This is not much notice for those wishing to participate, but seems par for the course considering the city didn't even GIVE notice when they removed the south side bikeway from the bridge renovation plans. That said, here are the details:

Time: 1 p.m. Wednesday, August 26
Place: Mayor's Office (1052 Budapest, Városház utca 9) 2nd Floor, Room 277

Mayor Tries to Allay Margit Bridge Worries

According to the most recent post by Hajtas Pajtas boss Gábor Kürti on criticalmass.hu, the mayor's office has issued a letter promising the plans for cycling accommodation on Margit Bridge WILL NOT be changed.

This was in response to an open letter sent by the Hungarian Cyclists Club protesting an apparent renegging on an agreement City Hall made last year to ensure cycling lanes on both the Pest- and Buda-bound carriageways of Margit Bridge. The latest PR materials regarding the impending bridge refurbishment indicated bike accommodation on just one side of the bridge.

Deputy Mayor Miklós Hagyó, the cycling club's main sponsor at City Hall, took up the issue with the city's chief architect Éva Beleznay, who promised to address the issue at the City Council's meeting following the August 20 holiday. The positive assurances from the mayor himself came shortly afterwards.

Despite all this -- and because of a history of broken promises to the cycling community over the past several years -- the previously called demonstation at on Margit Bridge is still on at Tuesday, 6 p.m.

City Betrays Cyclists with Margit Bridge change

Shafted again!! I can't believe the latest news about the debacle of the reconstruction of Margit Bridge. First, budget overruns of some HUF 17.1 billion (EUR 62 million) let the City Council to nix scores of other transport projects, including several bike paths. Now the cycling accommodations on the bridge itself have been squeezed.

Last fall, City Hall and the cycling community agreed on a cycling lanes on both sides of the bridge (as pictured above). The Hungarian Cyclists' Club announced the compromise in November. The one on the north side would have been a dual-direction path to ease access to Margit island while the one on the south side would have been a one-way path going with the flow of Pest-bound motor traffic.


According to the latest plans, explained in this post (and pictured above), the south side accommodation has been removed altogether. (Comepare the photos and see where a cyclist is on the left-hand side in picture one, and missing in picture 2). The north side, bidirectional path is all that remains for cyclists.

This would be a major step back from the agreed plans, which would have finally given cyclists a safe, convenient track on both sides of the street. This would have allowed Pest-bound cyclists to pass over the bridge without wasting their time on each end crossing the street to get to and from the north side path. The hope was that the dual lanes on Margit hid might be a first step in having dual lanes or paths all around the körút. Now these hopes appear in jeopardy. 

Cyclists at criticalmass.hu have announced a demonstration against this betrayal at 6 p.m. Tuesday, August 18 at the bridge. The post said details are to come.