The new agreement is simpler, better, and fairer than the old one, Minister of Construction and Transport János Lázár stated in his Facebook post on Monday after reaching an agreement with Mayor Gergely Karácsony. According to the agreement, the Budapest pass will remain valid throughout the entire capital after 1 March, and BKK will also accept monthly county passes and national passes for those commuting to Pest County.

The agreement serves as a model for all other towns, opening the way to a genuine, national tariff community, János Lázár remarked. He mentioned that the new tariff system benefits commuters from the countryside, as they can now travel on BKK with a national pass. Commuters from the agglomeration will also benefit, as transport cost will be reduced by approximately 10,000 forints for 75,000 adults and 3,500 forints for 85,000 secondary school students per month. Additionally, small schoolchildren in the agglomeration will enjoy free transportation, and 200,000 secondary school students from Budapest will now be able to travel for 945 forints instead of 3,450 forints monthly, he outlined. The agreement also benefits 350,000 adults in Budapest, allowing them to travel within the city and beyond its borders with a single county pass.

The new agreement is fairer than the old one because it does not give less to those who travel from the countryside to Budapest and within the city, Lázár noted.

The Budapest pass will remain valid throughout the entire capital, and starting from 1 March BKK will accept monthly passes for Pest County and national passes on its routes.

Karácsony also announced in a social media post that in order to keep the agreement fair, the Budapest-passes are going to be reduced in price:

‘I have great news! After 1 March, the Budapest pass will remain valid for all public transport services within the city, and what’s more, after ten years, we are reducing its price: it will cost 8,950 forints instead of 9,500!’, the mayor wrote in his post.

Both parties will sell each type of pass through all their distribution channels, informed the Mayor’s Office about the joint statement of the two politicians. The statement highlights that the agreement reached by the minister and the mayor makes public transport cheaper and simpler for hundreds of thousands of passengers. They agreed that instead of the previous cost-based settlement, the revenue from the Budapest pass, the Pest County pass, and the national pass, along with the associated fare supplements, will be proportionally distributed based on performance, adapted to the specific characteristics of the validity area.

The minister and the mayor also agreed that starting in 2024, instead of the annual normative budget support of 12 billion forints allocated to the Budapest Municipality, the parties will establish a system that equally serves the reimbursement of uncovered costs for public transport in Budapest and the agglomeration. The ministry and the capital will also settle the accounting disputes related to the previous agglomeration agreement that ceased at the end of last year. As a result of the new comprehensive agreement, the Budapest Municipality will pay MÁV 5.57 billion forints as the settlement of the agglomeration cost reimbursement for 2022-2023.

The technical details of the agreement will be worked out by the ministry and the municipality with the involvement of transport companies so that it can take effect on 1 March 2024.

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Sources: Hungarian Conservative/MTI