Budapest Public Transport In European Context

Hundreds of people scold the public transport of Budapest daily and argue about how badly organized it is. Yet anyone who has ever tried any means of the public transport of another European city could see that the Hungarian route network is competitive both in its extensive and coverage parts although the quality of these vehicles are not the best.

The portfolio.hu collected some opinions on public transport network of other European cities which have the same size and level of development as Budapest. Therefore we can compare the public transport service in Vienna, Prague and even in Warsaw. 

Due to the analysis and statistics of portfolio.hu, Budapest has the highest density of public transport network – twice as much as in Vienna or in Prague. According to Real Estate Developer Forum, Budapest has more stations than the other cities have in the examined regions. Statistically speaking, in Hungary there are 9 stops per square metre, thus none of the citizens has to walk more than a few hundred meters to find a bus- or tram stop. Moreover, Budapest has the largest daytime and night bus as well as tramline network. Vienna has only 98 stops, Prague and Warsaw have 134 and 170 bus lines respectively, while Budapest can boast surprisingly with 219. Actually, Bratislava and Belgrade have only eight and ten tramlines while in Budapest there are 31 different tram lines.

As it was mentioned above, Budapest has lots of stations: the numbers of the four metro line stops in Budapest are approximately the same as in Bucharest or Prague. Budapest has 52 metro stops while there are 104 ones in Vienna, 57 in Prague, 21 in Warsaw and 51 in Bucharest. However, the area of a metro station in Budapest is nearly twice as big compared to that of Vienna or Bucharest.

Interestingly, the Budapest tram line network is the 7th most extensive one in the world with its 157 km’s length. In a worldwide comparison only Melbourne, St. Petersburg, Berlin, Moscow, Amsterdam and Vienna have larger tram line networks. On the other hand, the design of the Hungarian tram network is not so beneficial: in the cities like Vienna or Zagreb, the tram lines form a continuous and interconnecting network, thus the trams are easily avertable in different directions in case of malfunction. Therefore the trams could also be used as subway replacements in Warsaw and Prague as well.

The portfolio.hu website also checked the conditions of the vehicles: 7% of the trams in Budapest are air-conditioned and have a low-level floor for disabled people and only Bratislava and Bucharest have a lower ratio. However, the percentage of the modern trams is not good in Europe – even in Vienna only one-third of the vehicles is air-conditioned and has a low-level floor. As the figures suggest, the winner of the region is Zagreb where 66% of the vehicles are modern and have a low-level floor.