The Centre for Budapest Transport (hereinafter BKK) has started the testing of the so-called Futár transport governance and passenger information system, the equipment will be built into the vehicles by the beginning of this summer.

Upon the request of the Hungarian News Agency (hereinafter MTI) responded that the first trial of the system took place on the 10 December on a test route; the built-in on-board unit worked perfectly, at the central dispatcher service the staff could track the movement of the bus, and the informing of the passengers also worked properly.

Afterwards, the system was put to live trial on some lines in South Pest; on-board units were put in Ikarus 260 buses. At this time however, more issues occurred in the operation of the system – the correction of them have already been started by Synergon. The installation on the other ca. 2,000 vehicles (buses, trolleybuses and trams) can start after the repair.

A touchscreen on-board unit will be built into the driver cabin in every vehicle, which will provide real time traffic tracking and perform the provision of information to passengers in audio, and will control the screens and the electronic ticketing devices. With the exception of cogwheel railways every public transportation vehicle will also get a new radio system, and new, passenger informing LED screens will be set up (both inside and outside) on many of these vehicles.

These screens won’t be built into the old buses of Budapest Transport Privately Held Corporation (BKV) as the life spans of the devices are longer than of the buses’. The original plans included the installation of 257 screens in public places, but later on this number rose to 263. The change mainly includes the division of screens on the major junctions, which means that instead of bigger displays cheaper and smaller ones will be installed, which can be placed more flexibly, and to more places.

Within the framework of the project systems will be installed in 2,295 vehicles, and with the help of these, real time, GPS-based tracking will be realized, and in this way the dispatchers can control surface transportation.