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Public bicycle system of Budapest – How much is it?
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In knowledge of its prices, the press has already proclaimed “Bubi”, the forthcoming bicycle system of Budapest Europe’s most expensive one. In search of the truth, kerekagy.blog.hu contacted BKK (Budapest Transportation Center) and compared the tariff of many European system to find out how fair is this statement.
According to BKK, the prices of Budapesti Bérbringa (Bubi) are moderately high, more and less expensive systems also exist. The goal of BKK is to make people buy annual tickets and gain regular users.
The tariff system
Those who want to use public bicycles have to pay three different fees, the first one is access fee. The different access fees are 24 hours, 72 hours, 96 hours, weekly, half-year, and annual fees.
The second one is the 25 thousand Forints deposit, which the user gets back in the end of the rental period. Half-year and annual rental don’t require deposit, in these cases the user have to sign a contract with BKK. After paying access fee and deposit the users can ride their bicycle as many times as they want, but only for half an hour, because after 30 minutes surcharge have to be paid, which is officially called user fee.
The 500 Forints user fee takes effect from the 31th minute, and increases in every half hour. Until the 90th minute it is 1000 Forints, then it rises progressively. According to foreign countries’ experiences half an hour is just enough to reach the destination with public bicycle, generally no one uses them for more time. Probably it will be the same here, the furthest stations are 20-25 minutes away from each other.
There are two discounts: from the price of the half-year and the annual ticket, 5000 Forints can be used for cycling so it’s not a problem if the user runs out of the 30 minutes limit. Moreover, those who have annual BKV tickets can buy annual Bubi tickets at half price.
London is more expensive
Although the best known examples have already been described in several places, kerekagy.blog.hu investigated the topic in more detail. What obvious at first sight is that the 18,900 HUF annual ticket is considered too expensive in international relations even if 5000 Forints of it can be used for timeout (which anyway isn’t particularly necessary besides good network coverage and intended use). Furthermore, the 50 percent discount for those who have annual BKV ticket affects only 62 thousand people, and hopefully not only them will be involved in using the system.
The relatively high price of the annual ticket is also problematic from the standpoint of a former feasibility study which presumed that 75 percent of the users will have a season ticket. It’s a relatively ambitious, but not an unrealistic plan: according to the London system’s data of February 2013, 66.6 percent of the rented bikes were used by season ticket holders.
Kerekagy.blog.hu used six European systems besides Budapest to compare prices: those in Paris, London, Brussels, Dublin, Barcelona, and the Nextbike, which operates in several German cities. Aggregating the data it turns out that the annual ticket is more expensive only in London, but the occasional or periodic license fees are similar to Bubi’s, as well as the fees for timeout, whereas there are significant differences between different systems. (The prices are given in HUF, in 310.55 HUF-Euro and 371.08 HUF-Pound exchange rate.)
| City | Name | Annual ticket (HUF) | 1 week (HUF) | 3 days (HUF) | 24 hours (HUF) | Timeout (HUF/min) | Timeout 2 (HUF/min) |
| Budapest | Bubi | 18900 | 2000 | 1000 | 500 | 500/30 | Until one and a half hours, 500/30, then it increases progressively |
| Dublin | dublinbikes | 6211 | 1553 | 155/30 | Gradually increasing, 742/30 over 4 hours | ||
| London | Barclays | 33397 | 3711 | 742 | 371/30 | Gradually increasing, maximum 55,662 | |
| Brussels | Villo | 9938 | 2329 | 497 | 155/30 | Gradually increasing, 742/30 over 2 and a half hours | |
| Paris | Vélib | 9006/12111 (30/45 min) | 2174 | 528 | 311/30 | 621/30, over one and a half hour: 1242/30 | |
| Barcelona | Bicing | 14645 | 230/30 | 1394/60 over 2 hours | |||
| Germany | Nextbike | 11180 | 2795 | 311/30 (with season ticket: 155/30) | For season ticket holders 1553 for the whole day |
Just to be sure, kerekagy.blog.hu examined several areas which are considered extremely expensive even in European context. The fee of the Hungarian system is more expensive than that of Switzerland and Norway (Oslo), the annual ticket’s price in Oslo is only one quarter of the Hungarian (15 Euros). Thus only the London annual ticket is more expensive than Bubi, but that is much more expensive (76.7 percent more).
