Budapest GO route planning website
Lack of bicycle integrated route planner
Route planners favour fastest routes, often ignoring cycling and shared mobility. Better planning tools combine active and public transport for smarter travel.
Budapest GO website
Budapest GO plans fast, sustainable routes by combining public transport, bike-sharing (BuBi), and personal cycling options in one tool.
Easy-to-use interface with several great options
Users can plan trips with walking, public transport, or shared bikes, set preferences, avoid vehicles, adjust speed, and see bike availability.
Encourages active and sustainable travel
Budapest GO shows that flexible, multimodal route planning with user preferences boosts active, sustainable travel and user satisfaction.
Challenge addressed: Lack of bicycle integrated route planner
Route planning often decides how we travel, but most people just tap a destination and choose the fastest option. What is the problem with this? These tools rarely consider smarter, more flexible choices like cycling, city bike-sharing or combining these modes with public transportation, pushing us toward car use by default. The good news is that better tools exist, ones that combine active and public transport, helping you travel not just faster, but smarter, greener, and more conveniently.
Solution implemented: Budapest GO website
Budapest GO is a multimodal route planner designed for public and active transport users in Budapest. Its main goal is to help travelers find the fastest and shortest routes while using sustainable modes of transport. The city offers a dense public transport network, including metro, tram, bus, and rail services, along with the BuBi shared bicycle system. By considering all these options and even integrating the user’s own bicycle, Budapest GO helps creating efficient, flexible, and more sustainable journeys.
Results achieved: Easy-to-use interface with several great options
The website features an easy-to-use interface. Users select their starting point, destination, and preferred departure or arrival time. Walking and public transport are selected by default. Users can also choose which vehicle types to avoid and plan only accessible routes. Walking speed can be adjusted. For cycling, the route planner allows users to balance bicycle friendliness against route length.
A particularly distinctive feature is the ability to plan routes between any two points in the city using the shared bicycle service (BuBi). When this mode is selected, the website generates routes that combine BuBi with public transport where necessary. The platform also displays the number of bikes available at each station.
The website and accompanying smartphone app are widely used, as is the BuBi service. However, no publicly available data is provided on usage levels or on how frequently specific website features are used.
Lessons learned: Encourages active and sustainable travel
Budapest GO demonstrates that integrating multiple transport modes into a single, user-friendly platform encourages active and sustainable travel. Allowing users to customize the route planning, combine cycling with public transport, and adjust preferences like walking speed, accessibility or bicycle friendliness increases adoption and satisfaction. Other regions can apply this tool by also creating flexible, multimodal planning website that prioritize user choice and real-time information.
Learn more
The project Active2Public Transport is supported by the Interreg Danube Region Programme project co-funded by the European Union. The project was initiated by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Innovation, Mobility and Infrastructure (BMIMI), Department II/6 in cooperation with klimaaktiv mobil – the Austrian Federal climate protection initiative on sustainable mobility.