Chaos on the Vienna-Budapest railway line begins today?

A new phase of the Vienna-Budapest railway line reconstruction project started today. As a result, international trains will no longer commute between the Hungarian and Austrian capitals. Passengers will have to get on replacement buses between Szárliget and Biatorbágy. At night, they will have to do so between Szárliget and Budaörs.

According to Telex, the next phase of the Vienna-Budapest main railway line reconstruction started on Friday morning, Mávinform told MTI, the Hungarian News Agency. The project is carried out by workers and devices redirected from the Budapest-Belgrade railway development project. As a result, work there halted.

Since the reconstruction work affects both tracks from today, trains will not commute between Vienna and Budapest on this segment. Until 17 November, passengers must use replacement buses between Biatorbágy and Szárliget.

All passengers have to change to replacement buses

The revamp project started on 18 September and resulted in the railway schedule’s modification. Travel time increased, and passenger trains did not commute on the line. Therefore, people living in the suburbs and working in Budapest or vice versa had to use replacement buses. As a result, many traffic jams were created, and their travel time also increased significantly because public roads were not designed to serve that many people.

Furthermore, since freight trains use the Székesfehérvár-Komárom line during the Vienna-Budapest line’s revamp, passenger trains do not commute there. The journey takes 20-25 minutes longer because the stops of the replacement buses are farther. Even though there are accessible buses, bikes are not allowed on them, only baby carriages and wheelchairs. Freight trains on the Székesfehérvár-Komárom line will be louder and will commute even during the night. Here is MÁV‘s (the Hungarian State Railway’s) short video about the changes:

We wrote HERE that the Austrian state railway company, ÖBB, detached all Hungarian trains from the Western railway system because of their regular delays and that measure will last longer than previously expected. In THIS article, you may read about MÁV’s new leased locomotive that had a problem on its first trip