“There will be a railway to Batthyány Square, the heat will go into Kálvin Square” – Dávid Vitézy opens the concrete plans
The heat will soon arrive at Kálvin tér, a train will run next to the heat in Batthyány tér, and a metro will run in Mátyásföld. Grandiose plans and visions defining the next decades will be revealed in the words of Dávid Vitézy, and it will also be revealed how the professional work is carried out in cooperation with the capital and the government. The CEO of the Budapest Development Center (BFK) initiates the readers of Ripost7 into his work and plans.
- Author: Ripost
: He was only 15 years old when he founded VEKÉ. This is when other kids play football with the others on the field. Didn’t you like playing football and banding with friends so much?
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Dávid Vitézy: There are teens who prefer to be accompanied by adults. I also had friends at school, but I was always very interested in public transportation, so I talked to a lot of bus drivers and dispatchers. I had a lot of valuable human relationships at the time, and I still nurture them.
: They say he’s obsessed with worms. Is this true?
VD: True. It’s a big advantage to be involved in working hours for something you love. However, the big disadvantage is that you also spend your free time working.
: How did the period go by?
VD: I took advantage of the opportunities and spent a lot of time looking at the places in our plans. I walked along pretty much every railway and heat line, touring almost every corner of the city. The dogs chased me at the Rákos station, even though I just wanted to see what the railway junction would be like there. I also walked along the Danube bank in Soroksár, beside the sewer, wondering how good it would be if a promenade connected Pesterzsébet and Soroksár. I went through Rákosrendező and the surroundings of the Rákospalota railway station, which is also not the most attractive area of Budapest. It’s quite different from watching a lost, abandoned neighborhood from a satellite.
: Have you taken the vaccine?
VD: Of course, we have the third one.
: What is the most burning transport problem in Budapest?
VD: The fact that 6 out of 10 people from the outer districts and the agglomeration walk by car. In inner districts and housing estates, this ratio is just the opposite. Our biggest task is to get commuters from the garden cities to use public transport in this proportion.
: Anyone who travels in Budapest now may feel that this is impossible. What are the characteristics of this achievable goal?
VD: Our predecessors built 11 railway lines, four heat lines and four subways. We have a network of fixed tracks that still has a lot to do with it, but there are amazing opportunities in it. Many cities in the world have to build this out of almost nothing, plus where there is a high density of housing and plenty of interest can be damaged. We have the network, we just need to use it. The essence of our fixed-track railway strategy in Budapest is to involve heat roads and railway lines in the transport of the capital, and to make the railway as natural for people as the metro. Our other feature is that the kind of car-centric urban planning has not gained ground in us as in other cities. Many people believe that having another lane somewhere would solve traffic problems, but that is not true. If we made more lanes, more people would drive and it would be a traffic jam again.
: Will there ever be Amsterdam from Budapest? Is it possible to get people used to mass cycling here?
VD: The biggest opportunity is to get to the railway and heat stops easily accessible by bike. It matters a lot that, say, a man from Etyek can approach the railway station in Biatorbágy. Today, many people sit in cars only because there is no regular bike path, bike storage. We have just launched a program called “Cycling Garden City”. As for the inner districts, in five years, Paris has become an automotive-centric downtown, so you can do it.
: With Christmas’s Grand Boulevard Bike Lanes?
VD: It is not possible to solve this with yellow paint alone, but often you have to think about the given road section from inch to inch and redesign it. We did this on Andrássy út or Kiskörút, and the bike lane is being built without similar conflicts. On the boulevard, this work has not been examined so far. Cycling in Budapest has a future, but it’s not worth rushing, you have to do the sometimes great work of Sisyphus. The same could be done on Rákóczi út, but there should be a bicycle lane, a car and a row of trees. This requires thoughtful planning, from wall to wall.
: What are the plans of the Budapest Development Center?
V. D: With BKK in 2010, yet István Tarlós under our leadership, we started a very big job, when we replaced most of the bus and tram fleet, we did tram lines 1 and 3 and the Buda weaver, we introduced the BKK courier application. I am very proud of these, it was a huge job. And now I undertook the BFK as leader With Balázs Fürjes, Budapest and the Secretary of State for the Development of the Metropolitan Agglomeration to activate the dormant potential of heat and rail. Let me give you an example: today, from the housing estate in Pesterzsébet, people rush in the 23rd bus on Soroksári út, there is the heat on the bank of the Danube, it only goes by 40 and ends at the Slaughterhouse. If we renovated Ráckeve week and brought it to Kálvin tér underground, it would be 15 minutes faster.
: Heat in Calvin Square? It’s more of a dream than a plan …
V. D: These are concrete plans! BFK is currently working on more than a dozen such large projects on behalf of the government. The aim is to build them with EU funding in the coming years. Specifically, the heat extension in Kálvin tér is already in the planning phase of the building permit.
: The heat of Gödöllő to connect metro line 2 is an old plan. When can we travel on the new line?
V. D: After the election of mayor, the capital stopped the project two years ago. The government has offered to take over, this has happened this year, so planning is currently underway at BFK. We can start building in 2024 at the earliest, and if the persistent government support remains in the next cycle, it can be prepared for 2028 – we still have a lot of work to do, the first step is to build a consensus between the 5 Budapest municipalities involved.
Regarding how Dávid Vitézy envisions Budapest in 10 years, as he goes to work and was annoyed by the commentators, You can read it in its latest issue, published on Tuesday, November 16th. Search at newsagents and other outlets!
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