Railway project costing shockingly high would not even solve Budapest’s problem?

The execution of the Ferencváros-Kelenföld railway track will cost net € 936.7 million that will be carried out by V-Híd Építő Plc., directly owned by the richest Hungarian, Lőrinc Mészáros.

According to experts, the Southern Railway Bypass has become a tenfold overpriced project, but the price is only one of the problems, says 24.hu. The other problem of this severely overpriced development is that it does not substitute the dubbed V0 project. This project would divert the traffic of freight trains away from the Hungarian capital.

The problem

There is one further downside of the train track cutting through Budapest: noise pollution.

If the freight trains could avoid Budapest, the pollution would not be a problem anymore. However, there are designs to help mitigate noise pollution on the current tracks. Some say that is why the price of the project is so stunningly high prices.

Due to being only one Hungarian railway bridge over the Danube that can handle freight trains, it creates a ‘bottleneck’. The few kilometres connecting Kelenföld and Ferencváros railway stations handle both freight- and passenger train traffic.

The two railway tracks are not enough to properly serve the traffic, as besides freight trains, more and more passenger train use the same bridge, meaning that freight trains have to use this ‘bottleneck’ area when they can, leading to noise pollution around the tracks even during the nights.

To solve this problem, designs have been made to create a third and, in some places, a fourth train track to accommodate for the higher traffic of trains and the third railway track of the Southern Connecting Railway Bridge could be ready by 2022.

The wealthiest Hungarian builds railway in Budapest for ten times the average price

The related Buda and Pest side railway developments project was won by V-Híd Építő Plc., owned by the richest Hungarian, Lőrinc Mészáros. The project includes new stations, underpasses and noise-cancelling walls, and is estimated that the company will fulfil the project for € 930 to 960 million. Shockingly, this is ten times more than the experts estimated for G7.

24 put this price into perspective, reporting that in 2019, the operation of the entire Hungarian railway system – including new coaches and engines – cost around 346 billion forints (€ 988 million).

The main railway station in Vienna (Wien Hauptbahnhof) cost 970 million euros. However, it included 100 kilometres of railway.

The solution

An organisation created by the residents of the areas around the railway tracks cutting through Budapest oppose the project in favour of the V0 project. This would be a ring railway around the western and southern parts of Budapest that would lead heavy freight traffic far away from the populous areas of Budapest.

Interestingly, the V0 project has been the government’s go to solution since 2010, 24 writes. They wanted to finalise it by 2017, but since then it seems that the project is no longer active.

They launched the project in March 2021, but only two months later, they cancelled it in May.

Read alsoBrand-new luxury Hungarian railway coaches enter service from Monday – PHOTOS

Source: 24.hu, g7.hu, Daily News Hungary