VEKE carries on its counter-campaign against the 4th line of the Budapest Metropolitan

VEKE has repeatedly published a review concerning the 4th line of the Budapest Metropolitan questionable from a number of aspects. The experts of the BKV Private Limited Company, DBR Metro Project Directorate and the Metropolitan Municipality will again take a purely professional stance in answering the challenges of VEKE based on facts rather than assumptions.

In the past 16 years of this Metro project a number of non-governmental organizations challenged and made critical comments regarding the project of the 4th line of the Budapest Metropolitan. BKV Private Limited Company and the Metropolitan Municipality left no issue or comment unanswered; all allegations and assaults of political nature of the civilian organizations have been answered to the point. All reasonable and professionally acceptable requests and ideas adding to the value of the project and benefiting the city set forth by civilians have been integrated into the designs and plans of the Metropolitan.
In many cases, however, the allegations are purely speculative; the requests aired are unreasonable and completely unsubstantiated from the professional point of view. Some civil organizations have appealed to the court which rejected the petitions and ruled in favor of the Investor. For the hundreds of pages of the documentation of such disputes please refer to website www.metro4.hu under the heading “Disputes and opinions”. BKV Private Limited Company and the Metropolitan Municipality invite appreciate and answer to the point any and all professional issues, critiques and comments and are open to integrate into the project all reasonable and acceptable requests.
The sole professional fundament of the recent review by VEKE is constituted of their own statements and allegations: VEKE assert that the plans are outdated and the figures are bogus; VEKE refuse to accept any facts and figures that are contrary to their preconception.
Having agreed to the statement whereby VEKE’s objective is to implement the best and most cost effective means of public transport one can only come to the conclusion that VEKE is not fit to aptly serve this purpose. (Without the knowledge of the key survey figures of the Metropolitan Municipality regarding the intensity and direction of key passenger flows any proposal regarding the alternatives of efficient public transport would be highly dubious anyway.)
The reason why the answer to the review of VEKE entitled „ A spendthrift plan of the olden times” took more than seven weeks is that the staff of the DBR Metro Project Directorate has thoroughly reviewed and analyzed the allegations of VEKE. Indeed, the Investor retains the right to assert that a contention is justified and the project may benefit from it. This is not the case, however, with VEKE.
VEKE is a non-governmental organization of the many, and the Investor considers and answers to the point all the issues raised. One should remember, however, that non-governmental organizations including VEKE are anything but infallible.
The sole professional fundament of the recent review by VEKE is constituted of their own statements and allegations: VEKE assert that the plans are outdated and the figures are bogus; VEKE refuse to accept any facts and figures that are contrary to their preconception.
The criticisms, allegations aired as facts and frequent indulgences in personalities of VEKE merely center on proving their own preconceptions rather than stating facts and objective opinions. VEKE tend to investigate an issue from one aspect only and disregard a number of concomitant factors. VEKE are reluctant to consider any answers given to their allegations and factual figures stated against their assumptions; they are prone to make demagogue statements including inferably deliberate distortions of facts.
For illustration let us offer some professional statements regarding the latest allegations of VEKE.
It must be made absolutely clear that our response to the VEKE review was neither meant to be nor named as a study; its sole purpose was to answer the issues raised through properly grouped arguments and to correct misrepresentations. A study would serve a different purpose and it would be presented in a different structure.
The bottom line of DBR’s effort is to treat equitably the various passenger groups so that no benefits are granted to any group to the detriment of the others particularly with a net effect of deteriorating standard of service.
No intention to turn any passenger group against the others has ever emerged in the preparation and design of the 4th line of the Budapest Metropolitan. The DBR Metro Project Directorate has not downgraded and will not downgrade any passenger group. Since the objective is to create the most efficient means of public transport satisfying the largest number of passengers, DBR clearly replies to VEKE’s question that the extension of the Metropolitan is not planned in the direction of and in conjunction with the railway because only a few passengers would have benefited from such an extension in preference to satisfying the justified needs of far larger masses of passengers. The extension was planned to bring significant improvement for the city residents and those arriving from outside the city would also largely benefit from this solution compared to the current conditions. (Moreover, the benefits to be gained from directly connecting the Metro and the railways would hardly add up to anymore than a minute or two saving in transfer time whilst such a solution would be to the significant disadvantage of other and far larger groups of passengers.) DBR has not given up the benefits for passengers arriving from the suburbs; they are included in our calculations. It is the one to two minute gain in time of a smaller group of passengers given up against the loss of time by a far larger group of passengers.
The staff of the DBR Project Directorate has understood the message of VEKE and an adequate answer has been given. The 4th line of the Budapest Metropolitan is built to provide an efficient public transport service along one of the corridors of highest traffic intensity of the Metropolitan Municipality. The net effect of the same amount of money spent on fragmented projects in various areas of the city would serve the interests of a far smaller passenger community and to a much smaller degree.
The primary purpose of the 4th line of the Budapest Metropolitan is to elevate the standard of the public transport of the Metropolitan Municipality and to make public transport more attractive. One of the consequences could be the containment of further increase or even reduction of motor vehicle traffic. It is, however, a naiveté to assume that the Metro or any other means of public transport would directly reduce motor vehicle traffic. (No such relationship has ever been revealed so far.) One may contribute to or facilitate such reduction, but cannot directly precipitate such a reduction. Among others, it is the carefully selected routing of the 4th line of the Budapest Metropolitan that may contribute to the reduction of motor vehicle traffic. In big cities the need for a Metro emerged at the time when the number of motor vehicles and the traffic intensity were but a fragment of the current figures. The increase in motor vehicle traffic may only impel the upgrading of the rapid transport network falling behind by several decades of development.)
One of the key sources of VEKE’s blunders is the lack of knowledge of the various traffic ratios. This is particularly evident in Item 2 of their review. The passenger car traffic entering the city through 25 highways generated by 200-250 thousand people moving to and living in the suburbs does not exceed 200 thousand, i.e. they are certainly unable to give rise to the downtown traffic measured in a million units mentioned in the VEKE review. It is an oversize contradiction to expect a significant improvement in downtown traffic from diverting the commuters to trains, particularly in the light of the fact that VEKE’s documents fail to mention a single word about the conditions of such diversion of commuters and the terms of railway transport. It would suffice to mention just one figure, indeed, that the budget of train connection to the Ferihegy Airport is estimated at HUF 50 billion, yet it requires the modernization of one single railway line to assure 20 minute intervals between scheduled trains.
Another indication of VEKE’s blunder is the solution proposed for the public transport of the 22nd district. How do they see the diversion of intra-district travel to a railway line serving suburban passengers when the outgoing trips from this district amount to the multiple of the entire suburban traffic?
The reference to the curve ratios in DBR’s response is accurate: all railways must be licensed and rules must be complied with for licensing. The Metro may not join the railway track under right angle, and there is no station at the Tétényi road, i.e. the centre of the housing estate, and there is no direct connection to the Gazdagrét housing estate if the curve ratios are complied with. (This mistake is indicative of the tendency in the VEKE review to examine an issue from one angle of their choice, ignoring a number of other factors.)
Despite all allegations of VEKE the facts and figures show that the solution suggested by VEKE would be far worse for many passengers than the service offered by the 4th line of the Budapest Metropolitan.
The statement of VEKE whereby the turnaround times of the Metro are untrue is an utter lie. The turnaround times of the Metro are based on run charts precise to a second as opposed to the overground means of transport surface, that are based on the official timetable in the „parameter book”. One should not forget that official timetables fail to include speed limitations due to the poor technical condition of the track and the effect of bus lanes. The lack of latter shows in the extent of departure from the timetable and it is integrated into the latter only gradually.
It is not by pure chance that the cruising speed of overground means of transport has remained in the same range for many years while that of the motor vehicle traffic has significantly changed. The cruising speed that forms the basis of comparison with the Metropolitan in VEKE’s study depends on completely different factors such as speed limit under the traffic regulations, distance between stops, etc. One should see clearly that there is no peak time and other turnaround in the timetables!
It is also a pure fabrication that the metros currently built in the cities of industrial countries are all different, just DBR failed to “confess” this fact. No mention of this circumstance is found in the response of the Project Directorate. This topic was mentioned in DBR’s response that the cities cited as examples built first the urban Metropolitan before the S-bahn network serving the suburban areas (which is not connected with the Metro). The 5th line of the Vienna Metropolitan is a special misprint: it is quite clear from the context that there are five lines of the Metropolitan. The construction of the urban metro was obviously considered a priority in the said cities because it affected a larger number of passengers, and today they can concentrate on the suburban train network because the urban Metropolitan network is complete. It makes no sense to generalize in these cases because the development of urban public transport is always determined by the passenger traffic figures.