Várnagy Zoltán: Urban Transportation - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1994)
In less than quarter of an hour there came the rattling noise of a tram approaching from the direction of outer Lajos utca. He walked over to the stop. He saw the blunt nose of the tram turning into the bend around the amphitheatre. Two battered cars, dark yellow and with brown window frames. It was a number 18. Its number was not yet visible, but he recognized each tram in the neighbourhood by its shape. Séna was standing on the platform of the tram, leaning over the rail. The train pulled heavily into the bend at Bécsi út. In the darkness, stretched alongside the track, there were dark figures scattered along the long-arching bend. As the tram slowly moved by them, each of these shapes jumped, lazily and with drawn-out movements as it were, onto one of the lower steps of the platforms. As a magnet attracts iron filings, the trams sucked up these slim figures. (On the Eighteen Tram) Not only jumping on and off but fare dodging, too, has been something people have done almost from the time the first trams appeared in the streets of Budapest. This custom has even left a trace in the language in that the slang term describing the activity (tujázni from hátulja or hátujja, meaning “its rear”, i.e. to travel on the tram’s rear) has by now assumed the broader meaning “to go by tram.” The period from 1945 to 1967 was characterized by growth; since then the system has been in decline. Public morals had sunk to a level where the takings of conductors began to decrease steadily, so it became necessary to simplify the fare system and abolish transfer tickets. The use of tickets purchased in advance was also introduced. This idea, which involved the occasional checking of tickets, worked well until the first radical price rises of recent times. Nowadays, whenever prices go up, people become less dutiful about purchasing and cancelling their tickets, and they increasingly tend to ignore ticket inspectors. BKV (Budapest Public Transport Authority), founded in 1968, has raised its fares by 2500 per cent over the past ten years. The 17
