Cycling ban to be lifted on Szentendre Route 11

After years of being closed to cyclists, Route 11 in Szentendre will get advisory bike lanes.

It sounds as if the ban on cycling on Route 11 in Szentendre will finally be lifted. However, the timeline is murky and public authorities have made no public announcement on the matter.

Last week, a technical plan for the changes was presented in a closed-door meeting of stakeholders, including the Hungarian Cyclists' Club (MK).

As MK's staff engineer Miklós Radics explained in Facebook post, the ban will be lifted, but the road will be given only minimal cycling accommodations.

"They plan wide outside car lanes (at least 4.25m or more) with bike sharrows," Radics wrote.

Radics explained that the Szentendre section of Route 11 is not wide enough to accommodate the existing cars lanes and proper bike lanes. So the plan instead calls for sharrows, otherwise known as "advisory bike lanes", which motorists can drive on legally. An example of sharrows in Budapest are on Margit Bridge -- they're marked with chevrons and cycling pictograms rather than a solid line separating cyclists from motor traffic.

"It's not the best and most bike-friendly solution, but it's still a big step if we compare it with the nonsensical prohibition," Radics said.

"Moving the curbs and redesigning the whole road won't happen in the coming years. The municipality and the road maintenance company (Magyar Közút) will co-fund the budget for the repaint."

The plan was based on a study by the engineering consultancy Tandem Kft. on a commission by Szentendre City Hall.  Staff from Tandem revealed the study's results and recommendations last week to a group of select stakeholders, but neither City Hall or Magyar Közút have make any public announcement on the subject.

A representative from the Szentendre branch of the Hungarian Cyclists Club said they would prepare their own announcement on the scheme in the coming days.

Cyclists Should Speak Up on Szentendre Route 11

Szentendre City Hall's surveying for a scapegoat.

Apparently, Szentendre City Hall is trying to derail a years-long lobbying effort to allow cycling on the Szentendre section of Route 11.

Last month, City Hall commissioned a "technical study" to see if the 6.5 kilometer stretch of Route 11 inside Szentendre could be opened to bike traffic. This follows several years of lobbying by a handful of cycling activists in Szentendre who are fed up with being banned from the city's main public road because of their environment-friendly choice of transport.

Cyclists who ride on Route 11 (myself included, full disclosure) routinely get pulled over and scolded by police and some have been fined. You can get a fine for even crossing the road by bike, which is crazy, because you need to cross Route 11 to get from the Budapest bike path on the west side of the road to the Szentendre bike path just opposite. You can make this passage through an unlit service tunnel, but it's inconvenient and especially useless if you're carrying baggage (as touristic cyclists on Eurovelo 6 do in summer).

When cyclists first lobbied on the issue years ago, City Hall deflected the question to another entity, the Hungarian Road Authority (Magyar Közút Nonprofit Zrt.). But under sustained pressure by the local branch of the Hungarian Cyclists Club, the City Council agreed to appeal to Magyar Kozut to see if the ban could be lifted. The road authority, although reluctant to make the change, eventually agreed it would defer to the city's wishes. The local cycling lobby was told that the cycling ban had been lifted, and now it was just a matter of putting up signage and painting lanes to seal the deal.

But this isn't what has happened. Instead, the matter's is being subjected to a technical study and it's once again unclear whether cyclists will get their way. In fact, from the sound of the latest official communication, the new study is City Hall's way of deflecting responsibility yet again:

"Many would like to be able to cycle on Route 11, but according to others, the already busy, often congested road is not suitable for safe bicycle travel," the announcement states. City Hall, therefore, "takes no stance on the matter."

What's worse, according to inside sources, is that City Hall is pressuring the engineering firm undertaking the study to dampen the expectations of cyclists. Somebody at City Hall has actually scolded the firm for making "optimistic statements" about the study. The firm was told not to make any public statements on the study at all.

As far as I can see, the city had hoped deflect the question onto outside experts in the hope it could be rejected on technical grounds. This would relieve officials from making a political decision.

It's a ruse. The only thing that makes cycling unsafe on Route 11 is fast-moving car traffic. Barring big investments in separated bike paths (which will not happen), the city would need to make some on-road bike lanes and to reduce the road's speed limit, say to 40 km/h. This is not a technical challenge, it's a political one: Does the City Council support it or not?

A small glimmer of hope is that there is an element of stakeholder consultation in the study: It's being carried out in cooperation with Magyar Közút; City Hall officials and the Szentendre branch of Hungarian Cyclists Club.

Now would be a very good time for cyclists to speak up on the issue, telling the mayor they support the Cycling Club and its efforts to allow bike traffic on the street. If you agree, please send a note, in Hungarian if possible but no necessarily, to the mayor at polgarmester@szentendre.hu.

Week 4: Patch job accelerates ...

Path patch job is coming along, slowly but surely.

Three posts in a row about the Szentendre path patch job? That's obsessive. But whatever ... for the sake of documentation: The pace of the work has picked up. Maybe it had something to do with a colleague and I sending in impatient letters? Probably not. But the job has accelerated since then. At the beginning, the work crew came out just one day a week. But last week they came out two days, and this week they've come out three days already, and it's only Thursday!

Don't want to get too excited though.

My guesstimate is they've patched about 500 metres of path now. Let's hope for dry weather tomorrow.

Job could take awhile

Szentendre bike path work moves progresses slowly.

As mentioned in my previous post, I went ahead an contacted the Hungarian Road Company, Magyar Közút Zrt., about their recently started patch job on the bike path between Budapest and Szentendre. In my email to them, I explained that the work to date didn't look adequate. The path is 25 years old and in a terrible state of repair. I told them I've been cycling on it almost daily since 2002, and that I've busted many spokes, wheels and axles because of all the cracks and potholes on this path. It needs a complete resurfacing, not the sort of remedial patch job that's being done.

I sent that note on Friday (Nov. 13) and received a reply on Monday from Attila Tóth, Magyar Közút's supervising engineer for operations and maintenance. In essence, he explained that the Szentendre bike path does not belong to the Hungarian road network, but due to an "unfortunate administrative procedure," Magyar Közút was selected to maintain it. The company tried to hand it over to local governments -- by which he means, I assume, the municipalities of Szententre, Budakalász and Békásmegyer -- but none of them manned up. Magyar Közút doesn't have dedicated resources for bike path maintenance, so they're expending only minimal energy on the current job, and only as weather allows. They're employing inefficient technologies ("by hand" he said), as their modern road-making machines can't access the path.

This response doesn't offer any solace or recourse to the users of the path. Just a long explanation of why the situation is shitty and why it can't be anything other than shitty.

On the bright side, I noticed this morning that a Magyar Közút road crew was on the job once again. As promised, the work is agonisingly slow. Last Thursday, they managed to fix about 100 metres of path and if they do the same today, that'll be 200 metres. At this rate (100 metres per week), we can expect the entire 10 kilometre path to be patched up in 100 weeks. But of course, work will cease during winter and when Magyar Közút is busy with more pressing work (i.e., anything else). So even if they stick with it, the job could take several years.

For those who use this path, I'd urge you to contact Mr. Tóth and tell him why this job is important:

Tóth Attila
Üzemeltetési és fenntartási vezető mérnök
Magyar Közút Nonprofit Zrt.
E-mail: toth.attila@pest.kozut.hu
Webpage: www.kozut.hu

For the record, here's my email exchange with Mr. Tóth in Hungarian:

Tisztelt Magyar Közút Nonprofit Zrt!

Ma reggel kerékpárral mentem dolgozni a 11-es út melletti kerékpárúton Budapest és Szentendre között, ahol észrevettem, hogy a Magyar Közút munkásai már elvégeztek néhány javítást az út egy rövid, 100 méteres szakaszán.

Az iránt szeretnék érdeklődni, hogy mik a Magyar Közút tervei a kerékpárút javításával kapcsolatban? Az útvonal 10 kilométer hosszú, 25 éves, és a teljes hosszában nagyon leromlott állapotban van - úgy gondolom, hogy a kátyúzás nem fogja megoldani a problémát, egy teljesen új burkolatra lenne szükség.

2002 óta járok Szentendrére dolgozni és szinte minden nap ezen az úton kerékpározok. A repedések és úthibák miatt számos küllő, kerék és tengely ment már tönkre az én és kollégáim kerékpárján. Bízom benne, hogy a Magyar Közút olyan megoldást talál, ami hosszú távon is lehetővé teszi, hogy az emberek végre kényelmesen és biztonságosan tudjanak kerékpározni Budapest és Szentendre között.

Válaszukat előre is köszönöm!

Üdvözlettel,

Greg Spencer

_____________

Tisztelt Greg Spencer Úr!

Köszönjük megkeresését a 11. sz. (Budapest – Esztergom – Tát) másodrendű főút 13+236 – 16+952 km szelvények közötti szakaszán az országos közúttal párhuzamosan haladó kerékpárút burkolat állapotára vonatkozóan.

Tájékoztatjuk, hogy a kerékpárút nem része az országos közúthálózatának, így Társaságunk részére nincs elkülönített, előirányzott forrás ilyen osztályú létesítmények kezelési és üzemeltetési feladatainak ellátására. Ezen túlmenően az országos közúthálózattal kapcsolatos feladatok elvégzése mellett korlátozott kapacitása és eszköze marad Társaságunknak ezen, rendezetlen tulajdonviszonyú kerékpárút üzemeltetésére, ill. karbantartására.

Tárgyi ügyben az évek során több megkeresés, illetve bejelentés érkezett már Társaságunkhoz. Álláspontunk továbbra is az, hogy a tulajdonosi háttér rendezetlen és Társaságunk csak egy szerencsétlen ügymenet kapcsán került üzemeltetőként kijelölésre.

Ezen rendezetlen állapot okán kértük az érintett önkormányzatokat, hogy vegyék át kezelésbe az érintett kerékpárutat. Természetesen az ingatlan-nyilvántartás rendezésében partnerek vagyunk és ehhez a szükséges segítséget Társaságunk megadja.

Mindezeket figyelembe véve területileg illetékes szentendrei mérnökségünk feladattervi lehetőségei alapján, a burkolathibák javítását - az erre megfelelő célgép hiányában, korlátozott technológia alkalmazásával kézi erővel tudja elvégezni, mivel a meglévő eszközeink számára a kerékpárút megközelíthetetlen – az időjárás és kapacitás függvényében folyamatosan végzi.

Kérjük tájékoztatásunk szíves elfogadását.

Üdvözlettel

Tóth Attila
Üzemeltetési és fenntartási vezető mérnök
Magyar Közút Nonprofit Zrt.
Pest Megyei Igazgatóság
1134 Budapest, Váci út 45 D.

Szententre bike path being ... patched :-(

These are some of the patches done November 12, 2015 at northern end of Szentendre Bike Path. Work to date covers about 100 meters of the 10 kilometre path.

Looks like I got carried away. From the looks of the ongoing work on the Szentendre bike path, it's not being resurfaced, as I was led to believe, but rather getting a remedial patch job.

Actually, it's not clear what's going on. Yesterday, there was a work crew on the path at the Szentendre end. They told me they were just getting started on a repair of the entire length of the path -- from Szentendre to Budapest. But checking the progress this morning, there were nine patches over a short section of maybe 150 meters, and the work crew was nowhere to be seen. I don't know if this means they'll be back later to continue the work, or if they've already called it good. But even in the best case, it looks like I got way ahead of myself thinking they were doing a resurfacing. It's a patch job, the latest of several that have been done over the years. I'm planning to send a letter to the authority in charge, Magyar Közút Zrt., to clarify their plans.

In the meantime, I documented a few representative cracks and potholes to show just how dire the situation is. Sections of the path are so disintegrated that they're basically being reclaimed by nature. Like in photos of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.

This section is about halfway between Budapest and Szentendre just north of the Renault dealership.

Here, the edge of the path has broken off and is gradually sliding into
the ditch along Route 11.

Several years ago, some pavement milling was performed to smooth out some of the more egregious heaves and buckles on the path. Normally, milling is followed by resurfacing, but in this instance, they milled a few spots and disappeared. The result was awful. In some spots, the path had become even worse. Which is saying something.

This is a fun one for the adventurous cyclist. The recommended line of approach here is on the right, about 20 cm from the edge. You can't avoid a bump, but you can cut your losses. 

Mars Rover view of volcanic perturbations.

Hoping the patch crew won't overlook this one.

As bad as this looks, the experience of riding on it is even worse.

Szentendre bike path being resurfaced

Men at work -- hopefully.

 I still can't believe it. This morning on my commute from Budapest, I came across a road crew on the bike path in front of the Szentendre Aldi. They said they were just starting work on a complete resurfacing of the path. All 10 kilometers from Szentendre to the northern border of Budapest.

This path -- running along the west shoulder of Route 11 -- is about a quarter century old, one of the oldest existing paths in the Budapest area. It got a crappy patch job five years ago, but has never been resurfaced. I chronicled by hate-hate relationship with it here: its ruts and holes and gaping cracks have busted many spokes and wheels and axles. If I was Wierd Al Jankovic, I'd write an adaptation of Johnny Cash's "San Quentin". The first line: "Szentendre Bike Path, I hate every inch of YOU!!"

But nevermind, a three-guy road crew from Magyar Közút Zrt. was working on a small section of the path near Aldi, and they claimed to be doing a complete resurfacing of the path from start to finish. I think they said it'd be finished in a month's time. I'll keep posting on the progress.

Szentendre City Hall Turns Bike-Friendly

In 2014, a service road opened next the the Duna Korzó that provides for car-free cycling with a view.

Szentendre's local government has apparently turned a corner on the subject of utility cycling. City Hall wants to make the town more bike-friendly, and it's reaching out to cyclists to find out how to do it.

This is a big change from five years ago, when some local activists and I did a 'hotspot' analysis of local cycling infrastructure. We recommended some basic remedies to the then mayor, but he told us flat out that nothing could be done that cost money.

But Szentendre has a new mayor, 47-year-old Miklós Verseghi-Nagy, and the winds have changed. My company,  the Regional Enivironmental Center, recently initiated a feasibility study on introducing bike sharing here. Just a week after the study's kick off  at Szentendre City Hall, we were invited back to provide input on another bike-related matter: the installation of public bike racks around town.

Our colleague Attila Katona attended a meeting with a couple municipal officers, the owner of a local bike shop and representatives of the local chapter of the Hungarian Cyclists Club. The results were better than we'd hoped.  The main outcomes:

• The city agreed to install large portable bike racks (14-28 bike capacity) during the 5-6 warmest months of the year on the main square (Főtér) and the northern and southern ends of the riverfront cafe and restaurant strip (Duna Korzó). These could later become locations of permanent bike-share docking stations.
  
  
• The city will take steps to improve bike parking at the Szentendre HÉV station. Although transport operator BKK controls the property, City Hall will lobby for the changes.
• City Hall also wants to ensure bicycle parking is provided in front of high-traffic local businesses (grocery stores, banks, restaurants, etc.) The city might encourage this by offering subsidies, but may even compel owners to provide a certain level of parking based on the size of their properties (similar to the existing codes on car parking).

In general, city leadership is enthused about making Szentendre more bike and pedestrian friendly. A big first step will be expansion of the car-free city centre by banning cars during the summer on the korzó.

It's also eager to lift the ban of cycling on Route 11, the main north-south thoroughfare through town. Until now, cycling's been prohibited on Route 11 by the national road authority, Magyar Közút. At the urging of local activists, City Hall appealed to the authority to lift the ban and the petition has apparently succeeded.

According to the information Attila received this week, the legal barrier's been lifted and now it's a matter of following through with whatever signage and infrastructure that's needed. And their may be some personal motivation here: Szentendre's Vice-Mayor Dorottya Gyürk is a cyclist, and admits to a habit of riding illegally on Route 11.

Of course, to make Szentendre truly bike friendly, investments will be needed, and this is where many politicians balk. Even so, there's been a big attitude shift toward cycling at Szentendre City Hall, and this is great news.

Szentendre City Hall takes a stand for cyclists

Incredibly, this awkward underpass is part of the Eurovelo 6 bike touristic route. The public road authority forbids cyclists from crossing the road on the surface. Photo stolen from here.

The Szentendre local government is taking a stand against Hungary's public road authority in order to allow bicycling on the main road through town.

If you want to lend  personal support to this cause, you can sign a petition posted by a Szentendre subgroup of the Hungarian Cyclists Club.

This has a bit of history. Szentendre hasn't been terribly bike friendly over the years, and as someone who works and bikes there on a daily basis, I have ongoing issues with local cycling policy.

However, the local authorities in this case are trying to do something good for cyclists. For many years, the public road manager -- Közútkezelő Kft -- has banned bicycling on Route 11, despite it being the only option for many people to cross the town north to south. On the southern part, there's a shared bike/pedestrian path that cyclists are required to use. It's old and broken up, and not pleasant to ride on. And in order to get from this path to the dedicated bike path leading to Budakalász and Békésmegyer, you have to cross Route 11 through a horrible little underpass. Crossing on the surface is illegal.

From Szentendre's public transport junction (HÉV and Volan bus stop) to the north, there's no designated bikeway at all -- yet you're still banned from riding Route 11. One  local cyclist I've met has been cited by police for riding here -- and he successfully fought the ticket in court. Hungary's traffic code expressly permits cycling on public roads unless there's an adjacent bikeway provided. So Közútkezelő Kft.'s ban on cycling on the northern stretch of  Route 11 doesn't even accord with the law.

For years, Route 11 has not served as a local road at all, only as a high-volume, high-speed highway between Budapest and Visegrad (despite a posted speed limit of 50 km/hr in town). The local authorities are now wondering if maybe they can claim the Szentendre section for their own citizens, so that people can use it and cross it, by car, foot or bike, without cowering in fear of torrential through traffic. Allowing cycling here would be a good first step.

According to my local cycling contacts, the Route 11 initiative is part of a larger plan to prioritise cycling around the town. A couple years ago, a university student from Szentendre who had researched cycling in Denmark drafted a few relevant proposals for Szentendre. Apparently some of his ideas have caught on at City Hall. I think this is great. I have nothing against the use of cars for longer distance journeys between cities. But for local travel, cycling has an important role to play, and in Szentendre, there's huge untapped potential.

Children on Bikes Don't Count

I saw something that just broke my heart on my way home tonight. There was a guy about my age on a bike trying to cross rush-hour traffic on Route 11 on the south entrance to town. It's a crossing that, in high season, hundreds of people make every day, both locals and tourists on the Eurovelo 6 route. On the west side of the street is the purpose built bike path to Budapest. On the east side is the bike path into downtown Szentendre.

Despite the high bike traffic at this intersection, the only legal way to get across is via an inexplicably hard-to-find underpass that's accessible only by steep sets of stairs on both ends.

This poor father might not even have known where the underpass is -- it was dusk and there are NO signs pointing the way. And even if he knew, it wasn't a realistic option: he had a little boy on board -- couldn't have been more than two years old. He might have accomplished it by taking the little guy off the bike, carrying him through the bike tunnel, leaving him at the other end for a moment, then rushing back to get the bike. But what parent wants to leave his little child unattended along a traffic-choked roadside for even a minute?

So this father was trying to cross the road as best he could. When I saw him, he was pushing his bike through weeds on the side of the road, and coming up onto the tarmac through a gap in the metal guardrail. The father had an anxious look on his face as he was contemplating traversing four lanes of speeding traffic while ensuring the safety of the most precious thing in his life.

I'm a father of a boy just a couple years older. I empathised with this stranger. It made me want to tear someone's head off. Why in the hell isn't there a safe bicycle crossing at this intersection? Do Szentendre's transport managers have so little regard for people that they can't offer a simple and obvious street crossing for a father and his two year old boy? Unbelievable.

Another Year, Another Run-in with a Car

Riding into Szentendre yesterday morning, I got broadsided by a motorist who didn't bother to look before coming out of a grocery store parking lot. It had been just over a year since I was hit by a truck on the same morning commute, that accident also a result of the driver not looking before accelerating out of a parking lot.
I was riding north on Route 11, the main road into town, and, as is my preference, on the carriageway rather than the broken-up sidewalk, which is what passes as the designated bike route here. I was on the right edge of the curb lane going an estimated 28 kph, and was passing by the north entrance to the Lidl market parking lot. A compact car exiting the lot was waiting to turn right into my lane. If the car had waited as expected, I would have passed 2-3 metres by its front bumper. But at the last instant, I could sense in peripheral vision that it was accelerating right into me. It hit the rear of the bike, knocking it out from under me while I tumbled to the pavement. The bike was sent scraping across the pavement about 10 metres away into the middle of the next lane.

I got myself up and turned toward the motorist, who had already pulled to the curb and was out of the car. I was so stunned by what had happened -- there was nothing to explain it. It was broad daylight, and there are no visual obstructions at that entrance, nothing but clear sightlines hundreds of metres in both directions. I held up my hands, as if to say, "WHAT ... THE ... FUCK!!!?"

I wanted to rip someone's head off. However, the driver -- a women in her late 50s -- appeared more shaken than I was. She asked if I was hurt, should she call a doctor? I told her I wasn't hurt -- just scraped up. I said we were both lucky and asked why she didn't look before she came out of the lot. She said she didn't see me ("Nem latom!"). And then she broke down into convulsions of tears. I ended up having to console her -- although I didn't go so far as to tell her it's alright. It's not alright to drive a 2,000 kg vehicle without watching where you're going.

This morning, as some deeper aches and pains are coming to bloom beneath the scrapes, I'm struggling to draw useful lessons from the incident. When I was last hit, I was on a separate bike path next to the road and I drew some lessons from the incident, one being that when motorists are turning onto a road, they pay more attention to traffic on the carriageway proper than they do to the sidewalks and bike paths.

But in this latest collision, I WAS on the road. The driver simply didn't look before she turned.

Not to excuse this driver, but a general problem in Szentendre is that very few bicyclists are on the roads. And when drivers aren't used to looking for cyclists, they tend to miss them.

Just the day before my accident, I was cc'd on a citizen's complaint about the poor cycling facility along Route 11 within Szentendre. What's needed, the writer said, is an allowance for cyclists to ride on the carriageway.

The official response -- from the Magyar Közút Zrt. -- was that Route 11 is being used to its capacity, that cyclists would cause an unacceptable "interruption of traffic flow" and that, anyway, "parallel cycling infrastructure exists".

Well, the "infrastructure" that exists is a sidewalk, nothing that was created specifically for cyclists. Not only is this "bike path" unsuitable in its conception, it's in horrible disrepair: badly broken up on some segments, riven with cracks elsewhere and merely a mud track in others.

The only known way to improve safety conditions for cyclists is to increase the levels of cycling. This happens not by shunting them off onto dirt paths, but by prioritising them on city streets and giving them all due consideration for their safety. On the five-lane-wide Route 11, this is easily achievable. The only obstacle is political will.

Box Store Boxing Match

I was riding my bike into Szentendre the other morning and at the first big intersection, on Route 11 near the Városkapú retail complex, I see the sign on the left. This is a billboard extolling one of the as-yet unheralded miracles of the recently opened Megyeri bridge (the final link of the M0 motorway). Now that this multi-million euro bridge is in place, the sign implies, you, the lucky Szentendre/Budakalász motorist, have at your fingertips all the exotic delights of the Újpalota Polus shopping centre. Imagine that! Before, you had to drive south all the way to Árpád híd, cross the river, and then brave the untamed wilds of Újpest before you'd get even close to this shopping paradise. Now, it's right across the bridge!

But not exactly. Looking at Google Maps, it appears the Újpalota Polus centre is still 17-18 kilometres from the billboard, as compared to the previous haul of 23. Not a big shortcut, really. And if you try this drive during evening rush hour, when everyone else is doing the same, these are going to be 17-18 LONG kilometres. Believe me: the Megyeri crossing has become hugely popular with commuters. The bridge on-ramp near the bike path just north of Békásmegyer is one of my favourite places to do a holier-than-thou cycling fly-by. On a typical evening riding home, I'll whizz past 50 stationary cars, all queued up to get on the bridge -- presumably so they can go get a taste of that special Tetra Pak^® milk from the Újpalota Polus shopping centre.

Anyway, I thought this sign was a perfect emblem of the rampant idiocy that drives car culture. And then I noticed the other sign, just 10 metres from the first: a spray-painted rejoinder from Cora reminding people that CORA is on the same side of the river, right down Route 11 a measly 2 kilometres away! I love the apoplectic exclamation marks: We're right here you STOOPID drivers!! Same crap!! Two kilometres away!!

Touché, Cora. But what I can't figure out is why a multi-national hypermarket like Cora would be advertising with spraypaint. Wierd, no?

Szentendrens for Cycling Off and Rolling

A new group that I'll call Szentendrens for Cycling got off to a lively start on Friday, with a TV crew dropping by to document a local cycling revolution in its embryonic stage.

Ten people turned out, which I think was quite good considering this was our first meeting and it took place Friday afternoon, when most people just want to drink beer. But hey you people who didn't come -- we HAD alcohol! This is what I love about cyclists. They're a healthy bunch, and usually environmentally conscious and all those virtuous things -- but hardly ever abstemious when it comes to drink.

Not to give the impression we were a bunch of no-account boozers. The group included people with a variety of backgrounds that should help with our mission. They included:

• a representative of the Hungarian Environmental Partnership Foundation (Ökotars) who's working on a national Greenway system
• a co-founder of Hungary's biggest entertainment listings magazine PestiEst
• a rider from Hajtas Pajtas, the bike courier service at the vanguard of Budapest's cycling movement
• the president of the Szentendre-based Paradicsom Klub (Tomato Club), an NGO that offers bike rides and other recreational programmes for the blind and poor-sighted

Also on hand were Hungarian Cyclists' Club President János László and his colleague Virág Bence-Kovács, an engineer with expertise in infrastructure design.

The group discussed a working proposal written by local literature professor Balázs Devescovi, which highlights the most basic needs for cycling in Szentendre. Everyone agreed with these ideas, particularly the main point about the main road through town, Route 11. It turned out there were three of us at the meeting who have been pulled over by police on Route 11 for not riding on the rim-bending sidewalk that's designated as a compulsory cycling track.

One possible solution would be to mark out cycling lanes for both directions of traffic on Route 11 inside the city boundaries. If the road is too narrow for proper bike lanes and all FOUR existing car lanes, then the lanes could be designated "sharrows," which cars could also use when they aren't occupied by cyclists. Some may consider this dangerous, however that's only because existing traffic moves so swiftly. During the meeting, I made the point that although this road is part of a highway, it is inside the city limits and motorists have got to slow down. Cycling lanes could actually be part of the solution to this problem, along, of course, with better enforcement of existing speed limits.

When the Szentendre group works out a more detailed proposal, we'll submit it to City Hall. As part of this effort, one of our group will take photos of all the cycling trouble spots in town, and then input them into a Google map showing exactly where they are. If we get really ambitious, we might write up a detailed "cycling concept," a document that would serve as a guide and impetus for cycling development in Szentendre.

The cycling club has experience in getting municipal cycling movements off the ground, having put together cycling concepts for Budapest and Érd and having started work on one for Gyôr.