Old Bike Lanes, Beautiful Buildings, and Extortionate Trams in Budapest, Hungary
Just a short bus ride from Croatia, Budapest seemed like a place to tick off the list. It blew us away with its buildings, had some decent bike infrastructure, but the transit system left a sour taste as we left the City…
Laundry Day
The bus dropped us off quite far from the centre where we were staying, and after a bit of looking around the bus station, we eventually figured our way down the stairs and along the tunnels to find the metro train into the city. As we popped back out on the surface and tried to reorientate ourselves, it was just a short walk to our hotel. As becomes a requirement on all longer trips, it was time to spend the afternoon doing laundry.
With darkness upon us, we headed out to see a bit of the city, and it didn’t disappoint… Like most places we visit, we’d done no real research, opting to take it as it comes… With no idea what to expect in Budapest, we were taken aback by the beautiful bridges and buildings lit up at night. As we looked over to the buildings lit up at night, what appears to be a road along the Danube was only filled with people walking, running, and rolling… Interesting…
The City has plenty of shared bikes and shared e-scooters. Another thing I hadn’t seen before was an Uber taxi… Can that be hailed? Do they wait at normal taxi ranks? Can they be hailed like it is typical everywhere else?
The centre is largely pedestrianized like every good European city. Again, we need more of these… These cool old trams run right by our hote... No bike lanes yet on day one except the painted bike lanes running by our hotel…
Walking from Pest to Buda
If like me, you didn’t know… Pest is the flat side of the city on the east side of the Danube, while Buda is the hillier west side. We planned a bit of a loop to take in the citadel on top of one of the hills and then Budapest Castle. Walking along the street we were staying on in the Pest side, the bike facilities at this point were nothing to write home about—yet here I am doing it—from sharrows on what is obviously not a comfortable place to share the road, to a painted bike lane that is only marginally better. I’m not sure what the bike in a triangle pavement marking means…
A classic shot I feel like I’ve seen before, taken in a hurry crossing the street, but those old trams on the green bridge is Budapest in my eyes… The queue of cars on both sides of the tram tracks is a great illustration of transit priority…
Active modes are on the side on a shared pathway…
At the end of the bridge is a bi-directional protected bike lane, with lean rail at the stop bar and a bike signal… Scooters permitted too… With wayfinding specific to bikes scattered around the place… Note the bike lane seems constrained with the bicycle pavement marking taking up more than the lane width…
Then, what in my mind was a new tram, relative to the other old trams, this assumption will cost me later… Just like in Belgrade, a Woonerf like sign makes an appearance on a street that isn’t very Woonerfy…
We hiked up to the citadel high above the city only to find it closed and covered in scaffolding… Different view of the city at least…
By the time we’d walked up and down we figured we’d head up to see Budapest Castle at night… It’s amazing how much the light enhances the experience… Lesson being, add more light to you buildings at night, but it helps if the buildings are spectacular too…
There’s a car tunnel underneath that hill and a funicular that can take you up and down if you don’t want to walk…
Budapest is well know for it’s bridges, this being the famous Chain Bridge… With bike path underneath…
The Chain Bridge is actually limited to just buses and taxis. No private vehicles are permitted, which is a pretty bold decision for a bridge crossing… Most people moving by bike or scooter stay on the road, but some use the pedestrian area, which can be quite constrained… Likely not realizing that there is less risk from drivers…
The temporary closure of that road along the river apparently only happens at weekends… Great to see… Maybe the next Seine full-time and permanent pedestrian conversion…
Exploring by Bicycle
Hanging out the hotel window looking at those old trams… The landscaped median looks great, but I wonder if all that space could be better used by, say, pedestrians, patios, or protected bike lanes… It was soon time to find rental bikes for the day…
Just some people getting around with bicycles…
Budapest Castle during the day… But more importantly, interesting curbs that drain well, don’t catch your pedals, but do a good job of keeping drivers out… This is actually one of the neatest things I saw in Budapest… What would a Canadian version look like? Do they need to be stone? Would precast concrete hold up?
Segway tours and different levels of car lanes, bike lanes, and tram lines create a lot of grey space along the waterfront below left, but below right, are benefitting from some landscaping…
Further along on that bike path, actually it might be a multi-use path at this point… The trees at least soften the urban environment a bit at this location, as well as all the other benefits they provide such as providing shade, drinking rainwater, reducing heat island effects, absorbing carbon, etc…
Later, it separates back out to separate bike paths and sidewalks alongside the tram lines and tram stops…
And a little further along back at the location of that opening shot of the bike path with epic Parliament building in the background… It’s not a bad bike path through, with a roadie this time… Something that’s actually cool to see, as we often hear complaints from roadies about being slowed up on protected bike lanes… Good to see at least one favouring it over the road right next to it…
The pathway continues along under another bridge, passing through this bike signal and a dedicated tunnel for bikes. Also cool…
It’s hard to see in this shot, but it’s a channelized right-turn with a raised crossing for people walking and rolling…
It was an awkward climb up onto that bridge, but it featured what looked like a pretty fresh bike path relative to the others…
Back down by the river, a quick glance to the side reveals this somewhat continuous… Maybe more a raised crosswalk, but I liked the abrupt curb ramp that is effective in slowing down turning traffic…
Award for the best dressed e-scooter rider goes to this gentleman…
We carry on along the river on what seems like a relatively new section of the waterfront bike path…
We continued north through town, riding through a new neighbourhood hoping to see some recent bike infrastructure, but there wasn’t much to see. We continued on, taking a weed-lined bike path… A sign that maintenance isn’t a priority here, but like in Croatia, it seems like there was concerted effort many years ago to build protected bike lanes that maybe hasn’t been sustained… As we cut east to loop back around to the centre, we also stumbled upon this unexpected advisory bike lane… The centre vehicle lane looked pretty wide, but not a bad thing given my main issue with advisory bike lanes is the close passes by drivers when they stay in their central vehicle space instead of using the opposing bike lane…
The advisory lane led us to another protected bike path situated in this large boulevard… I guess one interesting thing with the bike stencils that is different to our approach is that they orientate them to the driver, whereas you could say we use them to indicate directionality of the bike path. I’m not sure it makes much of a difference, just an observation… Note the vertical separation and TWSI’s approaching the crossing…
That bike path switches sides diagonally across an intersection without much guidance. It’s a bit on the narrow side, but protected, and it works just fine… Those concrete domes are sometimes set in the asphalt to protected bike lanes, although I didn’t actually get a photo of this…
That bike path continues, sometimes protected by these metal railings and somewhat “wild” grass boulevard…
As we turn back toward the Danube, we’re back on a bike path with separate sidewalks, and something I found super interesting was the bike path being continuous through intersections… Not raised, which would be better… But the paving carries through and, as you see below, is being used by people on a variety of micro mobility devices…
Then maybe our first and only Dutch-style protected intersection facilitating turns from bike path to bike path… We seemed to have yield signs at the crossing, but there are zebra markings and elephant’s feet that would suggest we have priority… I can’t recall now how we navigated this and if we yielded, cars yielded or there were even any conflicting cars at the time… There were plenty of wayfinding signs somewhat haphazardly arranged, but still great to see directions to many destinations…
We made it back to the centre along similar routes to that already shown above. One thing I hadn’t noticed before, is that the shared e-scooters all had licence plates on them… We could add this to the list of things not to copy…
We headed back out in the evening on foot to see the Parliament building lit up at night, but first one of the main pedestrian streets with bicycle taxi’s, or are they called rickshaws here? Waiting to take tourists around the city…
Below, a variety of people moving by the Parliament building at night on bicycle, e-scooter, foot and by tram…
A short walk back toward the centre, this bicycle street of sorts seems to be freshly paved…
The Extortionate Tram Ride…
Getting on the tram outside our hotel, things are about to get expensive. It should have been easy. It takes us from our hotel right to the train station, where the train will take us to Vienna… The 49 to Kelenfold… Our big mistake… Buying a ticket for the “old” tram because all I’d seen in the few days here were what seemed like “old” trams and “new” trams… I should have spent more time researching, but I figured just buying a marginally more expensive ticket would be good either way… On the tram, I had trouble validating the ticket using the App and QR code shown…
Halfway through the journey, the ticket inspector comes on and asks for our ticket… I show them the ticket in the app that I wasn’t able to validate and ask them for help… At which point, they show me a card with English language instructions to pay a fine… No discussion… No attempt to help a tourist… As we try to explain or at least understand what is going on here, the fine doubles and they threaten to call the police if we don’t pay… Not wanting any trouble, we pay the fine that turns out to be CAD$90…
I disputed this through their online complaints form, and two months later I received a reply saying that the fine stands, I’d bought the wrong ticket, the “old” trams only run on weekends which it clearly states somewhere in the app that I din’t see at the time, but also that “during inspections and surcharges, our colleagues cannot consider the good and bad faith of passengers on the spot, they cannot differentiate between passengers, they cannot exercise fairness towards anyone, they must act consistently”. I’d argue it might be a better policy to be consistently fair, but it’s their system, their rules I guess… Lesson learned to read the small print… If only all systems had tap to pay with a credit card…
It left a sour taste, and while we enjoyed the beautiful buildings, pedestrian streets, and some decent bike infrastructure, It’s for sure knocked this off the list of places we’d go back to… Service charges and tipping being another… However, waiting for our train to Vienna, there was at least some interesting grade and tactile separation between the bike path and sidewalk…
A bit of a protected intersection and some more cargo bike activity…
Oh… and note that Kelenfold Station, as indicated on Google Maps, is the old derelict station. We went there first, realized it was derelict, and found a dynamic timetable display above this inviting tunnel that takes you up to the platforms… It seemed odd, but we’d heard this area wasn’t that great… Turns out there is a whole new main station all underground, a short walk over, that wasn’t highlighted on Google Maps…
We boarded the train to Vienna, glad to be moving on… Interestingly not a single ticket check on the RegioJet Train…