Transportation reports from Budapest

Turning Numbers into Dialogue: BKK’s Accessible Traffic Reports

The Centre for Budapest Transport (BKK) publishes its traffic report every month. In these reports, BKK highlights interesting data through good-looking infographics about public transport, cycling, the bike-sharing system and traffic in major transport hubs. These reports tend to reflect topics that are at the centre of public conversations, such as the effect of traffic calming measures or the change in ridership after a bus route is changed. These changes are often controversial, and providing data that can be used as a basis for public discussion is critical to a good debate. The data in these reports is presented clearly and easy for the public to understand. BKK also shares this report on its social media accounts. 

Informing the public about the various transportation trends in a city or region is key to facilitating a fact-based public discussion and raising awareness about important phenomena. Transportation agencies need to be able to communicate their decision-making process for the sake of transparency, especially when it comes to controversial policy decisions. Laypersons tend to have biased perceptions of different modes of transportation, traffic, and the effects of traffic management policies.  

This practice provides an efficient solution to the problem of how to inform the public about trends in a region's transportation and how to present data on complex transportation-related issues. BKK has been publishing these reports for several years, which can be a sign of success.

The main limitation of such reports can be the availability of data. BKK has several automatic data collection devices on vehicles and at some intersections, and also uses occasional traffic count data in these reports, so the marginal cost of these reports is relatively low. If not enough data is collected, then generating these reports can be cumbersome.