Beyond Best Practices Policy Brief - Closing the transportation

Budapest and some other municipalities have Strategic Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs) to guide emissions reductions in the transport sector however with the exception of the development of cycling infrastructure and the careful reallocation of transport space - municipalities are reluctant to take the substantive steps to reduce GHG emissions. [...] But thirty years ago, many of the solutions of the 21st century were not mainstream knowledge, except for the fact that for many people, it is the bicycle rather than the car that can give them the freedom to move around. [...] In addition, because of the inadequate maintenance of the road network, in some settlements where there is no rail passenger transport, the road is inaccessible by public transport because the road to the settlement is in such a poor state that buses cannot run,3 and there are hardly any other public road services in Hungary. [...] 2 sometimes even on Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) lines that were upgraded with EU funding a few years ago.4 The post-1990 boom in private car ownership has been compounded by a misguided urban policy, and the two have combined to create a huge population explosion in the settlements around Budapest and the agglomerations of the larger rural towns. [...] The opinions put forward in this briefing are the sole responsibility of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Federa l Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK).