HUNGARY: Chinese President Xi Jinping and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán have reached an agreement to start ‘preparation works’ for the development of a rail freight bypass around Budapest and a rail-based link to the capital’s Ferenc Liszt International Airport.
The agreement was announced by Péter Szijjártó, Hungary’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade on May 9 following the Xi Jinping – Orbán meeting, which was part of the Chinese President’s diplomatic visit to France, Serbia and Hungary.
Szijjártó had visited Beijing on April 24, and after a meeting with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi, he said that an agreement was reached to ‘include more Hungarian railway developments in the list of infrastructure projects of China’s Belt & Road Initiative’.
‘This will allow the Hungarian railway network to be upgraded and developed quickly and efficiently with external funding’, according to Szijjártó.
Budapest freight bypass
Szijjártó said that the Budapest freight bypass would be realised as a ‘common Hungarian-Chinese development’. The line aims to facilitate the faster transport of goods on rail from factories in the east of Hungary, many of which have been established by Chinese companies, to markets in western Europe.
Branded as ‘V0’, the greenfield freight bypass south of the capital has been planned for many years. The project aims to accelerate international freight trains by avoiding the limited-capacity lines used by passenger trains through the city centre. It would link the Budapest – Cegléd – Szolnok and Budapest – Tatabánya lines via a section of the Budapest – Beograd main line; this is currently being rebuilt and double-tracked in a Chinese-backed project.
Airport link
The second agreement covers the start of preparation for a rail link between Budapest’s Ferenc Liszt International Airport, which is not directly rail served, and the city centre.
According to Szijjártó, the airport rail link would support access to the growing number of Chinese flights arriving and departing from the airport.
Details of what was described as a ‘rail rapid transit link’ were not disclosed, but according to an earlier proposal, the airport link would be constructed and operated by CRRC, and run on a fully separated alignment. This would largely follow national infrastructure manager MÁV’s existing main lines.
