Mezei István: Urban development in Slovakia (Pécs-Somorja, 2010)

4. Towns in Slovakia after 1993

Towns in Slovakia after 1993

Slovakia (and also Hungary!) still has to recognize that the European social and economic relations require that individual countries should implement a network-like rather than a single-line transportation conception. At present a single-line west-east road network is under construction in Slovakia, while the construction of public roads for the northsouth international traffic is still a vague idea of planning. In case of Hungary, the single-line road network means a road network with one centre. Hungary is continuously developing its historical road and railway network with Budapest as its centre, and still has no intention of changing it into a net-like system. Both countries should recognize their own new geopolitical situation.

The map in Figure 15 shows the route of the Slovak motorways that are to be built and the route of existing Hungarian motorways. Between the two road networks there are borderland settlements. It may be stated that the Hungarian motorway network serves the traffic of the dynamic region between the Austrian border and Budapest, while in the eastern part of the country it connects the towns of the North Hungarian range of mountains.

On the Slovak side, however, the long southern area of the country is not crossed by a freeway, but, starting from Bratislava it runs to the north. This is indicative of the fact that the chances of development in Southern Slovakia have been disregarded and pushed into the background, since road construction, just like any other state-controlled development, is carried out on the basis of intended plans.

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