PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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As far as mode specific details relating to the first strategic direction, i.e. the
promotion of EU integration is concerned, the Hungarian national policy clearly favors
investments in the road sector. Interestingly, the 1996 does not [yet] pre-dominantly
focus on new construction, but emphasizes maintenance, and even mentions cycle paths
as an element promoting EU integration. Bypass roads, however, are also mentioned,
thereby implicitly reemphasizing the importance of the M0 ring road as an “EU
integration project”:
Previously postponed programs of maintenance in the road network must be carried
out without delay. The program should, later on [sic] include the completion of
autostradas [motorways] in the transit corridors … as well as … new bridges.
Additional general programs include building of bypass roads, reduction … of the
number of road/railway level crossings, reconstruction of points with high traffic
concentration, at peripheral locations, and expansion of the bicycle path network.
Within the railway network, only selective developments can be envisaged. These
will include, primarily, modernisation of the main transit lines, investments in areas
wherever cost reduction and/or quality improvement can be achieved, and where
safety will be enhanced.
[bold italics in the original, additional bold emphases added]
In other sections, the document also contains rather specific statements regarding
various mode-specific developments as well as the relationship between maintenance and
new construction. However, in contrast to Keynesian-type approaches favoring reliance
on large-scale public works, the 1996 Transport Policy estimates that only about one
quarter of the total estimated financial resource requirements for all modes, namely 680
to 770 billion HUF, i.e. over € 2 billion would have to be covered by the state.
Nevertheless, the official document makes no direct reference to the most contested
Hungarian transport initiative of the time, i.e. the toll road concessions for the M1/15 and
the M5 motorways. Given the government’s acute lack of financial resources, toll roads
were regarded by many experts as the best way to complete missing sections of the