Budapest Mayor Gábor Demszky and Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány have entered a debate over whether the government should provide more funds for financing the Budapest transport company BKV. Demszky sent a letter to Gyurcsány on Tuesday, listing reasons why the state should intervene in the financial problems of the company owned by the Budapest government. Earlier, the mayor had turned to Finance Minster János Veres for help, which the finance minister refused.
According to Index.hu, Demszky in his letter responded to statements by Gyurcsány which the prime minister made on television Sunday.
When asked why the government refused to provide more funds for the BKV, Gyurcsány asked: “Would you like to pay more taxes, because Budapest is not doing its job?” He added that in 2003, the government and the city made a deal which included that the former would give the latter Ft 37 billion (€145.5 million) in exchange of solving the problems of the BKV. “We did our part,” the prime minister declared.
As a response, Demszky wrote in his letter that Budapest pays more taxes than what would be justified, with the residents and businesses in the city providing over one-third of the tax income for the state. The mayor also wrote that he is not asking for a donation but for the government to take away less from the taxes paid by Budapesters.
While Socialist government members are yet to officially respond, sources told the portal that Demszky’s letter is an admission that he cannot cope with the strikes, and criticized him of trying to get Gyurcsány to “clean up the mess he made.” They also pointed out that Hungarian taxpayers pay a total of Ft 50 billion each year for the maintenance of the BKV regardless of where they live in the country and whether they use the company’s services or not.
Privatize it and let it live on its own income.
Allow competing alternatives.
Introduce Congestion Charges in the City for all type of cars, 1000-3000 Ft/day.
After this Budapest will swin in money.
Nonsense. First you want to destroy a perfectly working mass transit system, then you punish people for not using it. The BKV is not the most efficiently run company, but it provides one of the best service I’ve seen anywhere in the world.
Management these days means cutting costs and services. The BKV is too important for such experiments. Stop senseless waste that’s all.
Public transportation should be heavily subsidized, lower fares and keep it going. A lot of people drive simply because passes and tickets are too expensive.
“Stop senseless waste that’s all”.
“Public transportation should be heavily subsidized”
So, staff, incl management, that knows that they never will be punished will work very hard to implement the 1st rule, because of the 2nd rule?
The problem is that public employed staff feels that they are more protected than normal people. There are alternatives where timetables, routes etc are decided by the City and that private companies run the trains, buses etc to a fixed cost. Every 5 years they can be changed if they do not do a good work.
Should have a congestion charge like in London, trucks banned from the city, investment in more park and ride schemes, better use of existing infrstructure, new travel pass like in London (Oyster) wiith the chance to pay as you go or travel passes. Introduce the more you use the cheaper it becomes principle.
Take a look on any weekday morning at the cars in the traffic jams. If you find one with more than 1 -2 2 persons in i will give you a prize!
As for Demszky and Gyurcsany, they deserve each other!