Várnagy Zoltán: Urban Transportation - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1994)

were set up as early as 1915 to facilitate easy access to cabs-or, rather, to make sure that cabbies had enough fares. (The Hungarian term droszt derives from the name of Theodor Drost who established the first taxi ranks with telephones in Berlin.) For a long time after 1941 the phone number of Autótaxi operators was 222-222. With the digit 2 recently added the number now is 222-2222, where Autótaxi’s successor Főtaxi will answer our calls.

By the end of the Great War only one or two taxi cabs were in running condition. After a year’s interval on 29 July, 1920, service was resumed with thirty cars, which could be hired for official purposes only. By 1921 an average of 76 cars were in operation making a daily profit of 1,660 koronás. The fleet was enlarged gradually, with Hungarian-made cars in accordance with the Industrial Law of 1922. Samu Haltenberger tried to maintain MARTA’s competitive edge by introducing very strict austerity measures. That was how it happened that they were unable to build comfortable enough bodies for a delivery of 150 chasses. Haltenberger solved the problem by introducing, for the first time in Europe, the “mini cab”, a car offering lower quality service at a fare 20 per cent lower than the regular price. This category existed in Budapest until the 1960s. There was room for three passengers in the small car built by MÁG (General Hungarian Mechanical Works) with a wooden body. The company’s name was changed to Budapest Automobile Transport Co. (Autótaxi) in 1923.

One-horse hansoms and two-horse hackney carriages survived into the mid-twenties, when their numbers began to dwindle. By 1930 they had virtually disappeared. Some of their drivers became cabbies. Taxi permits issued by the city council were sought after by many, and a large number of these licences were given to corporate, rather than individual, applicants. In the late twenties, the most significant of the former, apart from Autótaxi, were the General Motor Traffic Co. the General Motor Transport Co. and the Budapest Bus Transport Co. (BART). Small entrepreneurs running one or two vehicles established the Budapest Association of the Owners of Motor Vehicles for Hire. Their cars were first a uniform red and then, from 1934, blue. The larger companies united in the early thirties and had their cabs

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