Click on the picture for the bridges gallery © Stiller Ákos

If every one of the disaster scenarios touted by experts and politicians over recent years had unfolded as predicted, we would be taking the ferry from inner Pest to Buda. Though in poor shape, Budapest's bridges have not collapsed - but they are are carrying an ever increasing burden. The number of crossings has hardly changed, but traffic has risen dramatically. In 1990, 388,000 cars crossed Budapest's six bridges every day, while in 2000, there were 615,000 crossings. Traffic on Arpad hid rose from 93,000 cars a day to 149,000 over the same period - though this number had fallen to 107,000 by last year.

Yet the city fathers appear to be doing everything in their power to improve things. There has been no end to plans for new bridges. Everybody claims to be sure there will be a bridge at Aquincum, and another is touted for Kelenfold, not to mention proposals for pedestrian bridges, one of which was first floated at the beginning of the 1990s by the exhibitions commissioner, Etelka Barsine Pataki. Now, Ivan Andras Bojar, the city commissioner, is planning a covered bicycle and pedestrian bridge.

The only bridge being built currently is the northern M0 bridge, which forms part of the city's orbital motorway. The Medgyessy government promised it would open in 2006, but the Ft62bn construction programme took longer than expected.

The Megyeri hid, as it will be called, has faced criticism from the Air Work Group, which claims not enough has been done at each end to counter the effects of increased traffic volumes.
The bridge, which will be 2km in length, is made of five sections. There will be ramp on the Pesti side, made of reinforced concrete, followed by a suspended main span, followed by a stilted bridge across Szentendre island - drainage problems on the island would have made a road impossible - followed by a ramp down on the other side. It might have seemed natural to include access to Szentendre Island in the plans for the bridge. But this, too, would cause drainage problems, endangering the freshwater supply, so a separate bridge will be built to the island, the cost of which is guaranteed by the government.

Click for the gallery! © Stiller Ákos

The M0 bridge is urgently needed, because, according to City Hall, repairs to Margit hid can only start once an alternative is in place. They say closing Margit hid would bring the city to a standstill - although traffic experts don't all agree. Certainly, however, when work starts on the Margit hid, the Arpad hid and the (planned) Aquincum hid would bear the brunt of the diverted traffic. The city planning office once designed an Aquincum Bridge. It would be a suspension bridge, rather like the Lagymanyosi hid.

Since an Aquincum bridge is a very distant prospect, it won't be much help when it comes to alleviating traffic. Still, there may not be any need to shut down Margit hid entirely. The city has yet to decide on these and other questions, according to the director of Pont-Terv, the civil engineering firm that is involved in drawing up plans. Istvan Pozsonyi says no decision has been taken on whether the road structure should be made of reinforced concrete or steel (though the former would rule out a partial closure - traffic would have to be kept away while the concrete was being poured), nor on whether there will be a bicycle track, or whether provision will be made for disabled access to Margit Island.

There was even talk at one point of replacing Margit hid temporarily with a pontoon bridge, though this idea was abandoned: it would be too difficult to provide vehicle access to the temporary bridge.
"Bridges are generally designed to last a 100 years, though this means neither that it will collapse after that time, nor that it has to last that long," says the head of the Bridges and Structures department at Budapest Technical University. "Of course," Gyorgy Farkas continues, "it needs to be repaired once a decade, and a full refurbishment is necessary every 20 or 30 years." The Margit hid was last overhauled 30 years ago. There is no danger of the bridge rusting over, however. The weight-bearing structures are sound, he explains. It is the road surface that is in trouble, which has been damaged by anti-ice salting each winter. For this reason, the bridge builder explains, additional struts have been put in place in some 150 different places.

Work will start in the second half of 2008, and will last a year, according to the deputy mayor's office, costing some Ft12bn. The city will be seeking European Union funds for repairs to both Szabadsag hid and Margit hid. Work on Erzsebet hid will start later, in 2012-13.

Szabadsag hid is another contender for the title of "worst-maintained Danube crossing," though work has at least started.

The bridge has been in a sorry state for a good 20 years. When it was rebuilt after the war, builders confronted by material shortages had to make do with lower quality.