It will be very difficult to get to Budapest Airport from next Monday

Are you planning to travel to Budapest’s Liszt Ferenc International Airport in the next few weeks from Budapest’s downtown? Prepare for long queues, and bumper-to-bumper traffic jams because reconstruction will begin on the main roadway leading to the airport from Budapest’s downtown from Monday.

Reaching Budapest Airport will be challenging from Monday

According to Világgazdaság, the latest road reconstruction project in the outskirts of Budapest will concern the motorway leading to the Liszt Ferenc International Airport. The work will last for days on the M4 motorway. The segment is the section between Vecsés and Üllő.

As a result, there will be a lane closure starting from 19 June, next Monday, MKIF Magyar Koncessziós Infrastruktúra Fejlesztő Ltd, the motorway’s operator, said. The closure will affect the intersection of the M4 motorway and main road 4 in Vecsés. Furthermore, it will also concern the intersection leading directly to the airport. The ramps would remain open for traffic, but everybody should calculate longer travel times. Moreover, drivers will be able to use only one lane on the M4 motorway.

The airport intersection from a bird’s eye view:

As an alternative, they suggest everybody use the Gyáli Street-Nagykőrösi Street–M5 motorway–M0 highway–M4 motorway route to the airport. The work will start at dawn next Monday and is planned to end at the beginning of July.

What is MKIF?

MKIF is the company that won the operation tender for part of the high-speed road system in Hungary. The Orbán government decided to create a concession for that in 2021. That means instead of Magyar Közút Ltd, a state-owned company, a private enterprise will be entitled to operate half the Hungarian highways for decades.

Three groups applied, and a consortium of private equity funds in the portfolio of Lőrinc Mészáros, Hungary’s wealthiest businessman and a close friend of PM Orbán, and László Szij, won. They got the right to operate and upgrade several Hungarian motorways, including the ones leading to Vienna (M1), Lake Balaton (M7), and Ukraine (M3) for 35 years.

According to the calculations of G7, a Hungarian economy news outlet, MKIF will get HUF 5,500 billion for that from the highway users. Meanwhile, their expenditure will not be more than HUF 3,850 billion. That means the company’s solid profit will exceed HUF 46 billion (EUR 123 million) annually until 2057, napi.hu wrote. That tender has been the most valuable public procurement in Hungary since 2010.