10 strange Budapest metro plans from the past

The history of the metro lines of Budapest is quite rocky, but considering the other plans that were drawn up when it came to the design of the lines, nothing comes as a surprise anymore.

Pestbuda has collected some interesting plans regarding the Budapest metro lines from the past century.

1 – As part of the Hungarian Millenium of 1896, an exhibition took place in City Park, but there was a great need for some means of public transportation to get there. Building a tram line was not appealing for the city officials, as the wide and beautiful Andrássy way would have lost its charm, so the Budapest Public Handcar Company (Budapesti Közúti Vaspálya Társulat) offered to build an underground tram line (metro line 1 today) in the nick of time.

Construction began on August 9^th, 1894 and the line was opened on May 2^nd, 1896.

It was almost immediately suggested that the line should be extended all the way over to Buda, and it is still a reoccurring plan up to this day.

2 – Several approaches were made to the underground railway lines of Budapest: Szilárd Zielinski suggested the construction of a subway that runs beneath Hungária boulevard, Sándor Garády’s 1912 plans involved a line that connects Déli, Nyugati and Keleti railway stations. Aside from this, Garády’s other plans looked a lot like the current lines today in Pest; though he only had one line in mind that would connect Buda with Pest.

The strangest one was a plan for a spiral line, drawn up in 1942:

it would have crossed from Pest to Buda beneath the Elizabeth Bridge, then come back to Pest north of the Elizabeth Bridge, beneath the Margaret Bridge, would follow the line of the Grand Boulevard (where trams 4 and 6 operate), only to return to Buda beneath the Petőfi Bridge, south of the Elizabeth Bridge.

3 – The planning of the deep running lines that we are all familiar with today began in 1947, and following a three-year period of measurements and testing, the government gave way to the building of the metro line on September 17^th, 1950. According to the initial plans, the line connecting the east and west of the city (M2 today) should have been finished by 1955, but the construction industry was not prepared for this, and it proved to be too costly for the Hungarian economy.

4 – The original terminal of the east-west (M2) metro line would have been the Népstadion station (Puskás Ferenc Stadium today) in the following manner: