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Significant change in Budapest’s public transport from 2025: security increases
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In the mayoral election campaign, Dávid Vitézy, an independent candidate backed by the Hungarian Green Party, the opposition LMP, and later PM Orbán’s Fidesz, said the Budapest Transport Company should set up an independent law enforcement body that can guarantee a higher level of safety and security on their public transport vehicles. The new structure will start work in 2025. Here is what we already know about their tasks and authority.
Homeless people on trams, buses
In social media, passengers often complain about the unbearable and abominable circumstances they sometimes face while travelling with BKK public transport vehicles. The situation is worse in the suburban and outer district lines where homeless people regularly occupy seats despite not having showered for weeks or using them as a toilet.
Dávid Vitézy, a mayoral candidate in the 9 June elections who slightly lost to Gergely Karácsony with only a couple of hundred votes, submitted a proposal to the first municipal council sitting about setting up a law enforcement body for BKK. Despite arguing about multiple issues, the Municipal Council accepted Vitézy’s proposal unopposed.
Magyar Hang asked Ambrus Kiss, the former deputy mayor of Budapest and the current general director of the Budapest mayoral office, about how the project was advancing. Mr Kiss said the new unit would be an independent body, but integrated under the Budapest law enforcement directorate FÖRI.
Budapest’s public transport will be safer
He added that there were employees whose task was to assure safety and the passengers’ compliance with the travel conditions. BKK’s security service helped them before, and now, the two bodies will be merged, and the number of employees will increase to 50.
“[I]f somebody stinks, is drunk or aggressive, it does not mean they are homeless.”
If somebody stinks, is drunk or aggressive, he/she needs to removed from the vehicle and from the transit system.
In fact, it’s time to round up the homeless and move them to a separate area where they will be forced to either get help or stay indefinitely. Almost all of them have “mental health” and/or substance abuse problems, rather than be regular people who fell on hard times due to circumstances beyond their control. I, of course, sympathize with them because they are ultimately human beings but they cause problem for regular, law-abiding citizens and this problem needs to be dealt with.
So you are proposing a ghetto for homeless people. Hmm. Hungary has previous on ghettos.