I'm not aware of any actual mafia. They were almost certainly metaphorical and they must have been just bashing the local government. Because what they do is really a shame. One of the lines is de facto in a life threatening condition. Trains caught fire multiple times. Instead of being replaced, the 40 year old cars are being refurbished/modernized. This has something to do with the EU (they gave money for this, but not that). There was a tender, but miraculously it was the Russians who won it, despite their offer was quite a lot more expensive than that of the Estonians. And of course, as it happens with corruption, they failed to deliver a properly working version, so after a few weeks of testing, the first few trains were sent back.

About the security (or rather the extremely low quality) of the eTicket system: that was developed by a 3rd party that belongs to the Deutsche Telekom group, and that company is indeed quite a high profile system integrator working with a lot of large companies, banks, etc. So it's a bit of surprising (even if corruption is involved) that they released it in this form. Actually I'm surprised by these bugs even for a prototype that was forcefully pushed out of the door, because you just never do these things in the first place.

> Instead of being replaced, the 40 year old cars are being refurbished/modernized.

Age seems like a bit of a red herring to me. Here in San Francisco BART cars are about that old, Muni runs 90 year old Italian trams and American ones that are close to 70 years old. And, of course, the cable cars. BART bears about the worst of it because many parts are no longer available.

Interesting point. Don't forget that this is 40-50 year old Soviet technology :). And cars are actually in pretty bad shape, well over their planned lifetime of 30 years (AFAIK). Full of rust, sometimes catch fire. The drive system is also problematic, because it doesn't have regenerative breaking so the cars heat the tunnels quite a lot which is pretty bad during the summer.

They are in such a bad shape and/or hard to rebuild that not much remains of the original during the refurbishment.

Actually the Russian company and the tender has received attacks that the cars are actually new, only some identifiers have been transferred from the old cars, as Metrowagonmash had a dozen or so surplus cars of the type the used cars were supposed to be upgraded to.

Actually yes, the EU some money for refurb, not new trains.

The Russians didn't magically win the tender, i think it was realpolitik. They manufactured them originally in the first place, they have the means to do the work, and without knowing if the proposals were technically equivalent, Hungary needs to maintain a good relation not only to its neighbors, and fellow EU members, but to Moscow.

Also the trains are not in a worse working condition than the Siemens Combino trams or the Siemens and Alstom technology at Metro 4 line, which also had integration problems during the first months of operation. The problems will be addressed by the russian firm as well as as the western firms addressed those problems.

Well, only if you want to explain away the fact that the Estonians should have won the tender based on the official scoring and criteria. In other words, you are rationalizing. There's a reason why tenders always have a fixed scoring system. And this is it.

Maintaining good relationships with the Russians wasn't part of it, of course. We'll pay them enough for Pask2 (awarded without tendering). But even if not, because enough does not exist, more is always better, if this is the price of a 'good relationship' then we already have a bad relationship with them. I.e. they are blackmailing us. (Of course, it's not the case, but they are probably more willing to pay back than the Estonians...)

No, these problems are not like other problems, though Siemens and Alstrom were also both involved in corruption cases (I mean outside of Hungary), these are more serious and didn't happen with the others. It's not simply only integration problems.

Nothing like the cars build for berlin that were slightly too big for the narrowest part of the tunnels.

Please don't spread fake news!

The metro system is owned by the city, and ultimately the government. With all its problems, it is still not a mafia.

Although you are in a different part of the world, but when visiting the poor and backwards Eastern Europe, please use your common sense, or at least do some fact check.

TBH in Eastern Europe something being owned by government usually means that it's being ran (basically owned) by mafia.

It's just the old commie era thinking. Some people think of the government as a hostile entity. Strangely the same people believe in a strong state acting as a nanny, so they don't have to solve their problems themselves. Hopefully this will heal with time and people start to take responsibility in both their private life and politically.

Wow, there is some really funny shit going on in your head behind that pink goggles of yours? We are trying to deal with that for several years now, still a lot of work to be done. And no - that's not just thinking. Some of those government guys became so insolent that their shady schemes are basically open to public.

No, it isn't. Sorry but this is exactly the kind of "there must be a hidden agenda to this" thinking which skews your reality. Our governments are simply highly incompetent and terribly mismanaged, but not in the hands of organised crime. You can still draw parallels between ANY government and mafia.

Depends on the country, I guess. Come visit Ukraine - there is almost nothing hidden regarding those agendas here. One question, tho - if they are so incompetent and mismanaged, how come they're your government?

Ah, you are from Ukraine. This explains your bitterness. There are differences between Eastern-Europe and Eastern-Europe. Ukraine is in a whole different dimension regarding corruption, than Hungary.

Yeah, you're right, as the guy from Ukraine I'm probably preconceived quite a bit. But as an IT guy, I still do not believe that everything is clear with those 4 years and 9 million euro.

> if they are so incompetent and mismanaged, how come they're your government?

Because we elected them based on their skills in lying rather than governance. And also because government jobs naturally attract and promote incompetence.

Hanlon's Razor - Don't attribute malice to what could just as easily be explained by incompetence.

Turns out there are just a lot of incompetent people.

What do you mean eastern Europe ? This could be said for governments all over the world.

Why does a group of criminals need a subway? As a local guy using the public transport on a daily basis, I highly doubt this.

That pretty easy. Let's say you're a government official who's in charge of a local subway. One of the stations is in need of renovation. You're opening a tender for that and got 3 participants - 2 of them are some independent companies with bids around market price of the work required. Lets say 105 and 107 thousands euro. And the third company belongs to your brother in law and he wants 500 thousand euros for his services. In perfect world such bid won't stand a chance. But, since you're the one responsible for the tender, you can change requirements for the set of documents required for participation like one day before start, making it impossible for other participants to provide documents in time and thus making them unable to participate. So your brother in law wins the tender, sub-contract work to some third party for the market price and you split the rest of the money. And even if you're will be charged with "improper use of municipal funds" you'll be fined with something around 500 euro and will keep your job.

That is what I've meant by saying "basically own" - you can do whatever you want with company and you can't be held responsible for any of your actions.

And that's not just some imaginary scheme - that shit happens on daily basis in most of Eastern Europe countries. I'm from Ukraine and we're trying to fight that shit for several years now.

Not Just former Warsaw pact countries, This is a common form of low level corruption in many companies I was told that in British Telecom it was the most common form on financial misconduct that people got disciplined for.

I see I admit I was naive when I thought we do not play with services that are used by hundreds of thousands of people in the capital. But yeah the same shit happened here, too. We have to pay back part of the EU money we received for Subway 4 (Négyes metró) due to corruption investigated by EU.

To take EU funding, obviously :)

Why do criminals need to be re-elected at election time ?

Hm.. money laundering?

This is simple demagogue populism. This is not a critique of the problems, and does not start any fruitful discussion, and will not lead eventually to better conditions.

Oh, you seem to be using the code words of state-sponsored media pretty well. Demagogue and populism in the same sentence, nice! : )

Lets not pretend that the tenders made by the BKK is any more lawful or fair than the rest of the tenders that dominate the market around here.

Actually that is a critique of a problem. Because one of the biggest problem of Eastern Europe is corruption which leads to many different problems, that eventually result in such stories.

The biggest problem in Eastern Europe is corruption? Citation needed. In the USA you can influence politicians, even elections and it is called lobbying. The result is that roughly 70% of the legislation passed for companies. In Eastern Europe people keep re-electing politicians who are corrupt than it is on the voters not on the corrupt politicians. I think the real issue is exactly that, people cannot use their power (voting) too well and have limited knowledge about the economy so they are easy to fool.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...

Yeah, right, because in countries with high corruption level elections are always work as they supposed to.

Someone probably misunderstood something. Our government is usually referred to as a mafia government because of their tactics and modus operandi. The Metro is state owned and with a bit of a stretch I can understand where this is coming from.

You remind me of the Dutch railroad system. It has a monopoly despite having been privatized, and the majority stockholder is.... the Dutch government.

Since I can't edit the post, apologies to any offense I may have caused. Although I did hear this from locals, it was likely a communications breakdown.