Budapest Public Transport Planning "Everything Must Go" Fire Sale!

And no, we don't mean the Ikarus Incinerators. Opinion about the BKV is quite split, with people either praising it or spitting venom as they denounce it. To be honest, we find it one of the best running public transport services we've come across, even if none of us can call it one of the best run public transport services. To solve their ubiquitous financial woes, the intellectual heavyweights behind the company have decided that they should sell every remaining piece of property, our wonderful business-savvy sister site realdeal.hu told us. The BKV managers' souls, we assume, have already long changed ownership, hence those not being on the block.

Among the many items for sale include the funicular located next to Clark Ádám tér at the Buda end of the Chain Bridge, the Libegő, which is a chairlift to an ice cream stand in the Buda Hills, some of the parking garages, as well as the BKV's headquarters in District VII's Akácfa utca, which until fairly recently was the only building on that stretch of Budapest asphalt unlikely to fall on your head as you passed by in front of it.

The oh-so-inconvenient problem, however, is that aside from the funicular, none of these properties are really that hot, as the BKV has pretty much already sold what they could get a good price for, and it's likely that if they're going to sell their headquarters, they'll just rent office space somewhere for an outrageous sum, thus negating the very point of it, although this would continue a fine tradition for which the precedent has already been set.

Obviously, there is no easy solution to this dilemma, goofy PR stunts notwithstanding, but we hope it doesn't involve firing efficiency auditors who do their job or raising prices again. That just may kill what remaining empathy we still stubbornly hold for the company.