Totalcar – Magazine – Budapest was not built
There have always been comprehensive, big plans, and there still are. And there was always a main concept for which they wanted to transform the entire city – according to the current zeitgeist. Budapest was already a big city at the beginning of the 20th century (and, of course, much smaller than it is now), there were already plenty of current railway stations. Ironically, at the beginning of the 1900s, the transport development plans in the capital were about the same thing as they are now: the development of transport, primarily the elimination or transformation and connection of head stations (where the tracks end in a quasi-dead end at a station), which were already seen as problematic. At that time, this would have been sought after by the passer-by, and now, mainly the flow of cars from the agglomeration could be moderated by the modern fixed-track traffic.
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Gallery: Unbuilt Budapest exhibition
But in the meantime, there was the whole twentieth century with everything that happened around this time to the city, to transportation, and to the entire outlook. We have come a long way before we finally got back to the same place, because in a little more than one hundred and twenty years it flourished, and then it starts to flourish somewhat (at least in principle) with mass passenger cars. The exhibition now presents surprising, never realized, modified in the meantime, or plans that emerge from time to time about the large-scale transformations of Budapest’s transport.
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Gallery: Unbuilt Budapest exhibition
For example, it presents in detail the plan for the strong, wide boulevard starting from the new City Hall planned for today’s Deák square and passing through Nagykörút to Városliget, which first arose in the early 1900s. Later, the concept was dusted off, and in the early 1930s, Madách Square was planned at the beginning of the boulevard with the arcades that are still known today, and it was completed. Adapting to the same concept, they intended to widen Dob Street, and some houses were built in line with this in the surrounding streets, even in the 1960s.
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The plan for the widening of Dob utcaGallery: Unbuilt Budapest exhibition
After the change of regime, this plan was abandoned, and Madách tér finally got its current form in 2014, a public square closed to car traffic, the boulevard was of course not completed, in fact the square we know today is a short cut of it. But back to driving. In the 1930s, the spread of passenger cars was already an issue, the first plans for adapting the quays to car traffic, the underpass of the Lánchíd still exists on the Pest quay, this was the first such development.
In the 1950s, there was less emphasis on the development of public roads, as it was not possible to own private cars, but in the next two decades, we thoroughly fell into the trap when it comes to car developments, here everything was about passenger cars. This was the future, the desired way of life, every family had their own car, and they began to adapt the city to it.
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Ferenciek tere (Felszabadulás tér) before the construction of the underpass in 1973. View from the Klotild palace towards Kossuth Lajos utca, opposite the Belvárosi Ferences church. #253424 Photo: Fortepan / MAIN PROJECT / Endre DomonkosGallery: Unbuilt Budapest exhibition
At that time, one of the main efforts was the construction of multi-storey junctions, which can still be seen at Flórián Square or at the Keleti and Nyugati overpasses, but this was also the case with the Felszabadulás (today Ferenciek) tér car underpass, completed in 1976, which completely cut off the surface pedestrian traffic between the two halves of the city centre, for decades it was possible to cross a single zebra crossing, at the current Pushkin cinema.
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A Ferenciek tere (Felszabadulás tér) after the construction of the underpass in 1976. View from the Klotild palace towards Kossuth Lajos utca, opposite the Belvárosi Ferences church. #253718 Photo: Fortepan / MAIN PROJECT / Endre DomonkosGallery: Unbuilt Budapest exhibition
In 1973, 70 similar multi-level car junctions were planned for the city, most of them were not realized, this is how Kálvin tér, Astoria, or Móricz Zsigmond körtér would have looked.
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Rottenbiller utca, the photo was taken in 1969 during the construction of the overpass towards Fiumei (Imre Mező) út. #252532 Photo: Fortepan / MAIN PROJECT / Endre DomonkosGallery: Unbuilt Budapest exhibition
The underpasses are also set up as such multi-level junctions, but today the majority do not consider it fortunate that the aspects of pedestrians have been completely omitted here, just think of the difficulties faced by people with prams, the elderly or those with limited mobility. These plans were considered obsolete in the 1980s, and later the priority of non-car modes of transport returned, for example, in Ferenciek Square, the underpass was removed in 2012, and zebras returned to the surface. The overpass on Blahá was also not built in the end, but pedestrian traffic was quite difficult, pedestrian crossings were repainted there this year.
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The intersection of Rákóczi út and Nagykörút in 1963. The photo was taken for pedestrian traffic counting. #251813 Photo: Fortepan / MAIN PROJECT / Endre DomonkosGallery: Unbuilt Budapest exhibition
The rise of motoring was not only manifested in multi-level systems, in the early 1970s, for example, a complete network of expressways was planned for Budapest, not only the city, but also the country completely bisected in the east-west direction. After all, the western highways were indeed introduced into the city, via the BAH junction, the Erzsébet bridge, and then Rákóczi út.
The M3 would have been introduced into the city on Városliget and Andrássy út, although this actually happened, only it did not become an expressway, the original form of Andrássy and Liget remained. This road would then have continued in a high-speed tunnel on Alkotmány utca, then on Duna, and finally on the widened Csalogány utca (part of the widening actually took place, those who visited the city knew that this street was indeed much wider than the surrounding ones) to Moskva Square.
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The construction of the Kacsóh Pongrác út overpass at the entrance section of the M3 in 1980, looking towards Városliget. #66486 Photo: Fortepan / Hungarian PoliceGallery: Unbuilt Budapest exhibition
In 1971, in the National Long-Term Road Network Framework Plan, large-scale developments were foreseen to build a two-three-lane elevated road from Váci út over a planned Danube bridge to the M1 highway, as was the case in several other cities at the time. The radial incoming highways would have been connected by this ring road to be built above the Hungária boulevard. Similar to this was the A55 motorway in Marseille, which has since been demolished because parts of the city were separated by an impenetrable wall, but at that time we found it an advanced solution to serve the ever-increasing car traffic.
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Marseille’s A55 motorway has since been demolishedGallery: Unbuilt Budapest exhibition
By 1977, the Hungária ring road had grown so much around the city that this plan was abandoned, and the next year’s transport development plans were about the construction of the M0. In the 1960s and 1970s, it was typical to concentrate on the larger vehicle traffic and the partially planned subway network running underneath. The 4 subway, which was finally delivered in 2014, was already in the plans, and this was one of the most shocking details of the exhibition. I still remember, in the early nineties, when I was in kindergarten, we were digging in the Károlyi garden, when the kindergarten aunt came to ask what we were digging with my girlfriend. The metro number four, we answered, using the phrase taken from the big radio and the discourses of adults. And this already happened a good twenty years before the handover.
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Gallery: Unbuilt Budapest exhibition
Several of the already existing tram lines were deemed unnecessary due to the metro lines running underneath them, and here too the space was intended for cars, so the Rákóczi út tram was discontinued after the completion of the second metro line, and the Bajcsy-Zsilinszky and Váci lines ceased when the third metro line was completed. road. The tram lines running on the Kiskörút were also condemned to be abolished when the fourth metro was planned, but by the time the metro was actually completed, this plan was abandoned due to a change in attitude, the trams remained, and there are even plans to restore several lines.
The cities were really dominated by the car approach, although far from all of the above elements were realized, in fact, only the beginnings and smaller pieces of the big plans accumulated over the decades were built into the city, but currently most of Budapest is still adapted to cars, just like many others. other European and especially American cities (the latter is very instructive in An Instagram page called cars.destroyed.our.cities). Modernity has become smoggy traffic jams, since more than a certain number of cars simply cannot fit in another city that was not designed as a highway, but now most of us feel it is a necessity of life, a basic human right, we ask ourselves if we want such a change, this will be curtailed a little, pedestrian and possibly making the city more bike-friendly.
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Gallery: Unbuilt Budapest exhibition
The current big plans, on the other hand, point much more to the fact that the previous forty or fifty directions are unsustainable, and railway and public transport developments have come to the fore again. The current Budapest Agglomeration Railway Strategy, for example, wants to direct commuters from the suburbs to public transport instead of driving by building new junctions and transfer points, by connecting new findings to the system (a Káposztámgyer housing estate or the university centers in South Buda). The development of the southern ring railway is the other major investment plan, one of the largest in the last hundred years. This would create a railway ring around the city between Népliget and Kelenföld, which would connect many missing points to the system.
In 2019, the Demolition of the western overpass, similar to the ascent interchange that was demolished from Ferenciek square, and a tunnel is planned between Déli and Nyugati, among many other developments. The current trend of urban development plans has completely reversed, like many other European cities, it is greener, more pedestrianized, more focused on public transport and rail transfer options.
It was surprising to see all these plans and trends from the past – there is always one from a great century, it accompanies the whole city, then a war, a regime change, a crisis intervenes, we see the pieces realized here and there, then we move in and start using them as we know. Of course, it could always be better, but there are people who love us that way: always as they are.
The exhibition “Budapest was not built” was a temporary exhibition of the Transport Museum.
Concept: Dávid Vitézy, András Zsuppán
Curator: András Zsuppán
Design: Paradigma Ariadne