Dear Visitor,
Welcome to BKK’s homepage.
Following the 2010 municipal elections, the General Assembly of the Municipality of Budapest decided on introducing a new city management model. Within this concept framework, the Municipality created two new integrated bodies: one for the unified management of public utility and other public service companies (Budapesti Városüzemeltetési Központ, literally the Centre for Budapest City Management) and the other for the coordination and management of all transport-related activities. This latter body is the Budapesti Közlekedési Központ (literally translated as Centre for Budapest Transport, hereafter referred to as BKK).
Up until now, several different organisations have been responsible for transport-related tasks at the municipal level resulting in a lack of coordination, thus Budapest has not managed to make environmentally-friendly transport modes competitive, to reduce transport-induced pollution and to make the city more liveable. In the old structure, the planning, organisation and provision of public transport services was carried out by the public transport operator BKV; the operation and maintenance of roads and bridges was managed by a company called FKF; the preparation and implementation of road reconstruction as well as the supervision of BKV was the responsibility of the Transport Department of the Mayor’s Office. Yet another company, Parking Kft was in charge of parking management and the collection of freight-transport access fees, while a company (Taxi Nkft) – maintained just for this purpose – was responsible for the operation of taxi stands. All the while, numerous tasks were missing an owner and an integrated management approach which could have ensured transport development for Budapest based on a coordinated and well-prepared strategy. On top of all this, public transport in Budapest was characterised by deterioration, which resulted in its current decade-long lag behind. The system has become technically and financially unsustainable and thanks to the old working methods, infrastructure development projects have got into a critical state as a result of lacking management ability; the different transport sectors were not coordinated as a result of the missing complex approach. This is why city management has decided to revamp the whole institutional system.
Immediately following the 2010 autumnal founding of BKK, the preparation for the – partial – integration of the above mentioned organisations into BKK started and it has been on-going ever since. This long process will have legally finished by the end of 2011, yet the wide-spread use of the integrated approach across the transport sectors will take a long time afterwards. We would not like to spend the first year exclusively with institutional transformation, however. The first few months have already shown several results. For the first time in 15 years, there was no increase in public transport fare prices in Budapest; a new public transport schedule is in place introducing the all-night service of tram number 6 on Nagykörút (Grand Boulevard) and more frequent service on numerous bus-routes, public-space supervising officers have joined in the task of maintaining order on public transport vehicles; public transport development projects including the refurbishment of tram tracks have been allocated more funding than at any time before. Additionally, a new EU-funded project was launched for the replacement of old trams and trolley-buses and the Hungarian government has approved the refurbishment of the two circular-route tramlines (1, 3) including the extension of tramline 1. We could go on listing the projects we have launched in addition to the results described above, from the continuation of the inner-city reconstruction project called Budapest Szíve (The Heart of Budapest) Project to the preparation of the automated fare-collection system and the extension of tram line 42 in South-East Budapest. We strive to provide detailed information on these topics on our website, but we are also happy to answer any further questions. It is our aim to give regular updates on developments and projects, in order to inform citizens of Budapest well-ahead of the commencement of implementation in their neighbourhood.
Until the full completion of institutional integration, public transport in Budapest is being operated based on the current legal and contractual framework, which means that customer services are provided separately by the individual organisations named above. The current website of BKK also reflects this transitional state: on these pages, we primarily plan to introduce BKK as a company, the infrastructure-development projects currently being prepared or implemented under the auspices of BKK as well as important news regarding Budapest public transport. Our goal is to transform this site into the centralised transport-information portal of Budapest by 2012 collecting all relevant information in connection with schedules, journey planning, fares, parking, freight-traffic access fees, the detailed introduction of all transport-development projects – be that in relation to public transport or road reconstruction – into a single site; all this in addition to basic information on BKK, naturally. From the moment of its inception, BKK has taken the needs of disabled citizens into consideration: we have tailored our website according to the accessibility requirements of the blind and those with impaired vision based on the assistance we received from the appropriate organisations.
Only two fully-integrated urban transport-organising authorities exist in Europe: after London, now in Budapest, as well. At the same time, many European cities – such as Helsinki, Paris, Stockholm or Warsaw – have taken the step of removing the tasks of ordering and transport-organising from the scope of operators. Based on several international examples, we are confident that the unified treating of urban mobility and transport is going to result in a perceivable improvement in Budapest transport in a matter of foreseeable time – this is our mission in order to achieve a more competitive and liveable Hungarian capital city.
We welcome your comments and recommendations regarding our website, especially considering the fact that for now it is in a testing phase. We also welcome your suggestions in connection with transport organisation, but please consider that BKK as a company is still in its development phase, complaints and observations about the daily operation are still handled by the operators/service providers.
BKK and the new institutional organisation is a framework which makes it possible for us to successfully re-organise transport in Budapest and to make up for the lag in development of the past decades. The on-going transformation is the single most important change in the transport system of Budapest in the last 40 years, for which we request and thank for your patience, support, help and understanding in advance.
Sincerely:
Dávid Vitézy
Chief Executive Officer
