“Dear Passengers! Our delay is 307 minutes. We apologize for the inconvenience!”

A passenger train reached its destination 307 minutes behind schedule on Sunday – reported index.hu. In 2017, the overall delay of the Hungarian trains was 3.5 years. To make matters worse, according to index.hu, the trains of the Hungarian State Railways (MÁV) produced a delay of 23 years between 2008 and 2014, altogether. With these results, MÁV is the least reliable railway company in Europe. One can only imagine what, e.g., a Japanese minister responsible for public transport would have done in such a situation.

Hungarian trains delayed 1,831,556 minutes last year

One of the readers of Index.hu wrote that he wanted to travel from Budapest to Albertirsa on Sunday evening at 10 pm. According to him, he has been going by train for 15 years, but it never happened before that the delay of his train reached more than 5 hours. Thus, even though he should have arrived by 10 pm he finally reached his destination at 1:30 am the next day. Of course, a few hours later, he had to go back to Budapest to work. The delay of his train back was “only” to 83 minutes.

According to MÁV, the power line of the Budapest Electricity PLC fell on the power line of MÁV. Therefore, train traffic stopped for hours between Budapest and Albertirsa. Of course, accidents happen. However, such problems are

not exceptional in case of the Hungarian State Railways (MÁV).

Actually, delays are quite common not only in case of passenger trains but also in case of fast trains, Intercity trains and even international trains.

For example, in 2017 the altogether

delay of the company’s trains reached 1,831,556 minutes which equals 3.5 years.

This means that 11.55 pc of the trains fell behind schedule while the delay per train was 15.2 minutes. Furthermore, MÁV calculated the delays according to the UIC standard, so the company did not include those passenger trains that delayed less than 5 minutes 59 seconds. According to their data,

25 pc of the passenger trains commuting between Szeged and Budapest were not punctual.

Moreover, between Budapest and Vác trains delayed altogether 57,818 minutes last year.

Hungarian trains are the least punctual in Europe

According to index.hu, 40 pc of the delays could be avoided by developments in the railway network infrastructure. Since the government aims to spend altogether 4 thousand billion forints on the modernisation of the railway system in the next 4 years, a slight hope still stands.

However, according to index.hu, MÁV was the least reliable railway company in Europe. In contrast, it is good to know that the most punctual trains commute

in Lithuania where 99 pc of them arrive in time.

In fact, MÁV had 142.5 million passengers every year since 2012, which is quite high in Europe. Consequently, delays affect at least 24-27 million people. Thus, it is not surprising that every Hungarian has a hair-raising story about adventures with the Hungarian railway company. Interestingly, MÁV only gives back the price of seat reservations and fast train supplements. They paid 150 million forints indemnity between 2008 and 2013.

Source: index.hu