Cyclists Prevail in Bridge Lane Dispute

It looks like there will be a south-side bikeway on Margit híd, afterall. Last week at a Budapest General Assembly meeting, members voted to go forward with the original plans, as agreed last year with cycling activists. The path will make it possible for Buda-to-Pest bike traffic to stay on their own side of the street while crossing the span.

The vote reverses City Hall's earlier decision, made this summer just weeks before work started on the ongoing bridge renovation, to create just a single, two-direction bikeway on the north (Margit Island) side of the bridge. At the time, city officials said they had to remove the path because of difficulty getting necessary permits on the historically protected bridge.

Cyclists complained that forcing Pest-bound cyclists to ride on the island-side path would mean they would have to go through eight traffic lights, get off their bikes twice, and ride approximately twice distance as they would with their own, right-side accomodation. Some 500 cyclists demonstrated on the bridge on August 18 to drive the point home.

Another argument, raised by bike blogger András Földes and others, was that the plans that the city submitted with its application for EUR 6 million in EU subsidies had included bikeways on both sides of the bridge. City Hall's spokeswoman argued the bike path removal was a technical detail that the city could fudge without violating the aid contract. However, the Hungarian Development Agency, NFÜ, never conceded this point.

Now that the south-side path will be built, the city will have to apply for a city-level permit. City Assemblyman Imre Lakos claims this bureaucratic matter will not hold up progress on the bridge project.

Bike-Path Removal Violates Aid Contract

By removing the south-side bikeway from the Margit híd renovation plans, Budapest City Hall has violated conditions of HUF 6 billion (EUR 22 million at today's rate) in EU assistance for the project, according to a report on Index.hu by bike blogger András Földes.

When City Hall applied for the support via the National Development Agency (NFÜ), the plans included three paths for bikes. These comprised two side-by-side paths for two directions of traffic on the north side of the bridge -- primarily for those accessing Margit Island for recreational purposes. On the south side was a single, one-way path for cyclists going from Buda to Pest for transportation purposes.

On the basis of a renovation plan that included this cycling plan, the NFÜ awarded the City an EU grant of HUF 6 billion, which would cover almost a third of the total project price of HUF 20.8 billion (EUR 77.1 million).

However, in recent weeks it came to light that the plan had been amended to remove the south side lane altogether. This provoked letters of protest from the Hungarian Cyclists Club and a hastily organised demonstration of more than 500 cyclists on the bridge August 18. The cyclists' problem with the new plan is that for Buda-to-Pest bike traffic, a one-side-only path will mean going through eight stop lights, getting off and back on your bike at least twice along the way, and riding about twice the distance as would be necessary with a south-side bikeway.

Not only did the city violate its promise to cyclists, but it has also broken its signed agreement with the NFÜ. This states that if the objective of the aid is jeapardised in whole or in part, details, documents and facts of plan amendments must be sent immediately to the NFÜ. The deadline for such a notice is eight calendar days from the change. More than that time has already lapsed since the changes were revealed, and no notice has been sent.

For its part, City Hall spokeswoman Dora Czuk said the removal of the bike line was not a type of change that the city would have to agree with NFÜ.

But the NFÜ seemed to think differently. According to the Index report, when NFÜ Director Tamás Lukovich was asked about the matter, he said, "In the data sheet of the project contract, a south side lane is also included, and to date we have not received a request for amendment."

Here's hoping that the sight of HUF 6 billion swirling down the drain will finally stir Mayor Demszky into fulfilling his pledge on Margit híd.

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.

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.

Lessons from Times Square

If progressive urban leaders want to transform their cities from smoggy, car-choked clichés to green exemplars of Copenhagen Chic, they've got to co-opt the powers that be with razor-sharp, targetted PR.

This is my capsule summary of an insightful news analysis, by landscape designer Kristin Faurest of Artemisia Design, of what Budapest can learn from New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg's stunning coup in turning Times Square into a pedestrian mall. Download the full text of the original English-language article here.

Appropriately enough, the article takes a laser-beam focus on Bloomberg's sales job, an aspect conspicuously missing from Budapest City Hall's recent attempt to green the capital's thoroughfares. Here, the plan was packaged in a slapdash manner after word about the idea was leaked to the press. Proponents pitched it as an experiment with "artificial traffic jams," and the public greeted it with predictable scorn.

By contrast, the project in Times Square was preceded by months of meticulous planning and lobbying. When the plan went public, a coordinated sales effort focused on winning over key stakeholders, including retailers and motorists. Significantly, the PR campaign was given the upbeat name of "Green Light." As Faurest writes:

Green Light’s information campaign was characterized by transparency, openness, well-supported arguments, realistic timelines and detailed practical information for taxis, delivery trucks, and theatergoers. It was heavily planned, controlled and targeted. Central to the information campaign was a list of benefits the changes would provide:

• Traffic lights with up to 66% more green time
• Significant travel time improvements on Sixth and Seventh Avenues
• Safer and simpler crossings for pedestrians
• Faster bus speeds for 70,000 daily riders

Although Budapest City Hall's most recent attempt at greening the city's main arteries went down in a monsoon of rotten fruit, the idea of a quieter, safer more humane transport system still beckons. Those of us who want to bring it to fruition can learn valuable lessons from the miracle at Times Square.

The article appears in Hungarian in two online publications, the architecture and new-urbanist blog epiteszforum.hu and the general daily news site index.hu.

It's Official: Traffic Jam Proposal Dead

Today, the Cabinet of the Municipal Administration voted against the widely derided proposal to create temporary artificial traffic jams as a trial for greening Budapest's transport system. Not a big surprise.

Traffic Jams Prove Unpopular -- Doh!!

Prospects dimmed rather quickly for the recent proposal to create artificial traffic jams in Budapest as a precursor to greening the city's transport. Since the idea was leaked to the press earlier this week, a deluge of criticism has come down from politicians, the press, the Hungarian Auto Club -- even an NGO devoted to public transport.

The probable death knell came Thursday night, when the proposal's leading proponent at City Hall -- Deputy Mayor Imre Ikvai-Szabó (pictured) -- admitted "there was very little chance" of implementation this summer.

During his statement, as reported on Index.hu, Ikvai-Szabó, of the Free Democrat party, said he would still submit the idea for a proper hearing by the Budapest Cabinet. But he conceded that there was little political support or hope of getting it.

The most harsh criticism may have come from opposing party Magyar Democratic Forum, which gave Mayor Gábor Demszky the "birka díj" (dork award) for raising such an "absurd and laughable" idea.

The Hungarian Auto Club argued that it made no sense to create artificial traffic jams without providing adequate transport alternatives. The NGO VEKE (Urban and Suburban Transport Association), which has supported progressive initiatives such as the expansion of Budapest's night bus service, concurred, saying that before car lanes are taken away, the city would have to expand public transport, including the reinstallation of tram lines on Rakoczi út and Bajcsy-Zsilinszky út.

The shame of it all is that the failure of this poorly considered scheme may turn into a setback for the larger idea of improving living conditions in the city by reducing motor traffic and re-prioritising public space for people instead of vehicles.

In my first post on the matter, I criticised the utter lack of marketing savvy in the idea's promotion. By focusing on constricted road space and traffic jams, proponents are framing green transport as a kind of bitter medicine that residents must swallow in order for the city to get better. This negative approach struck me as baffling, especially considering all the positive things that green transport has to offer: healthier lifestyle, a quieter and more pleasant urban environment, cleaner air, safer streets, more inviting commercial and public spaces, etc., etc., etc.

Another thing came up during a conversation with a friend: the proposal is too sudden and drastic. The greening of a city is a long-term project. Copenhagen, to take Europe's best example, is now renowned for its invigorating streetlife and superior accomodations for cyclists. But in the 1970s, it was the same automotive mess that Budapest is today. The city managed its transformation through slow but continuous improvements over 30 years and never with an overarching plan. That city's transformation was proof that slow and steady wins the race.

Popularity of Traffic Jams Tested

Budapest City Hall is considering the creation of artificial traffic jams as a way to test public reaction to a proposed expansion of cycling and walking space.

The proposal, which hirszero.hu says is the brainchild of Deputy Mayor Imre Ikvai-Szabó, is part of gambit to see how motorists might react if road space is given over to cycling and bus lanes on such major arteries as Kossuth Lajos utca, Üllôi út, Bajcszy-Zsilinszky út and Hegyalja út.

During the trial period from July 4 to August 2, the closed traffic lanes would be used for various purposes. On Kossuth Lajos utca, one lane would be closed down on both sides of the street, with the liberated space to be used for "walking and shopping." Somewhat perversely from an environmental point of view, the closed lanes on Bajcsy-Zsilinszky út, Üllôi út, and the lower rakpart on the Buda bank would be available for car parking.

From what I gather, the idea is probably well-intended. Imre Ikvai-Szabó is relatively new to politics but has been supportive of progressive causes, including the renovation of Nehru park near the Economics University and Vásárcsarnok. Ikvai-Szabó is apparently open-minded and solicitous of diverse views, which are laudable qualities.

However, his idea appears strategically flawed in that it introduces people to the negative aspects of the initiative while concealing its benefits. The above illustration shows how Kossuth Lajos utca would look with a widened sidewalk, some attractive new plantings and a new bike lane. But during the trial, none of these amenities will be in place. The cordoned-off traffic lane will be open for walking, but how many pedestrians will want to step off the sidewalk onto a hot strip of tarmac that merely puts them in closer range to passing traffic?

It's much harder to understand why the closed lanes on the other arteries will be opened for parking. The city is merely taking space from moving cars and giving them to stationary ones. If the ultimate aim is to expand space for environmentally friendly transport users, why not make the closed lanes available to buses and/or cyclists during the trial?

The likely result of this test seems all too predictable: Motorists will hate it because it will exacerbate congestion on roads that are already over-subscribed. Meanwhile, cyclists and public transport users who would benefit most from a progressive transport policy will see few benefits, and may even be provoked against the initiative by the expansion of street parking.

Testing motorists' tolerance for traffic jams strikes me as an astonishingly negative way of promoting environmentally friendly transport. Ikvai-Szabó cites the success of the shared-space concept on Raday utca as his inspiration for the calming of city thoroughfares. I can't remember any trial traffic jams before that project was carried out. The district simply did it -- and with time, residents warmed to it.

Bold action is needed again on the city's thoroughfares. Without it, these initiatives will forever be stuck on the shoals of the status quo.