Budapest Public Transport to overhaul their map

Budapest transport company BKV is making changes to the city's public transport system in two steps this month and next, reports origo.hu. The first set of changes will take effect on August 21, while the rest will occur on September 6. The changes, which will affect the majority of lines, include merging routes, cutting services, modifying schedules, and changing line numbers and routes. A document containing detailed information on the changes can be downloaded from the company's website, www.bkv.hu, or picked up at ticket vendors. The document, entitled "Changes to Budapest's public transport from August 2008," says the modifications were decided with the consideration of passengers' needs and the structure of the city.

Important changes include that express buses, until now marked with red numbers or a red frame, can be recognized in the future from the letter "E" after their line number. In addition, several line numbers will be changed so that one number is used only once among trams, buses and trolleys.

Changes will affect nearly all bus lines. They will either arrive with less frequency or their schedule, line number or route will be modified. For example, the red 3 will renamed to 33E, the red 7 to 7E, 12 to 212, 18 to 218, 21 to 90A, and the red 21 to 190.

The document writes that routes of buses will be modified in Districts III, IV, XVII and XXII in order for them to cover the largest possible area. Other bus lines will be connected in order to make it possible to reach far-away destinations without changing lines. For example, Bus 5 will transport passengers from Pasarét to Rákospalota.

The company predicts that coordinating schedules will result in shorter waiting times, for example, at the Deák tér metro intersection. Plans to save money for the company include that during off-peak hours, trams will be two cars long instead of three.

Starting in September, metro trains will operate for a longer time. The first trains on lines 1 and 2 (yellow and red) will leave their termini at around 4:30 a.m., and the last ones on all three lines will leave at around 11:30 p.m. Changes will affect the suburban trains (HÉV) to Szentendre, Csepel, Ráckeve and Gödöllői as well.

Trams 4 and 6 will follow each other in more frequent intervals in some cases, 10 minutes instead of 15, however, the trams on line 4 will run until 10:30 p.m. only. Trams on line 28 will be considerably less frequent from the end of August, and tram lines 30 and 30A will be renamed to 21 and 21A, respectively. After Szabadság híd, the bridge connecting South Pest and Buda is reopened to traffic, Tram 56 will transport passengers until Móricz Zsigmond körtér from Hűvösvölgy. At the same time, Tram 47 will be restarted. Trolleys 79, 81, 82 and 89 will be less frequent, but 74 and 74A more so.

The first version of the planned changes to the city's public transport system were signed by Mayor Gábor Demszky at the end of May, but it contained cutting services to such an extent that the city operation committee did not accept it. The current version contains plans to reduce performance by 2%, which the BKV hopes will save Ft 1.1 billion annually.

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