From the 2026 budget audit
40.5 milliárd Ft in bus fare subsidy — the rural routes carry the most vulnerable.
The bus cost-reimbursement holds bus fares below cost across the network; on rural routes, the same bus often serves the very passengers a targeted scheme would protect.
About 10,400 Ft per taxpayer per year — 40,500.0 millió Ft total. Year-1 net saving of 6,750.0 millió Ft; the six-year glide coordinates with rail and suburban lines.
What you see — and what you don't
The seen: cheaper bus fares across the network for every passenger. The unseen: the worker who drives to work and never uses the bus, funding a fare reduction for travellers on routes that include both comfortable inter-city services and the sole-link rural bus on which genuinely low-income residents depend — the universal subsidy blends them both without distinguishing.
Objection
"Rural residents have no alternatives to the bus — cutting the subsidy leaves them stranded."
Answer
Rural residents on sole-link routes are exactly who a targeted concessionary scheme is designed to protect, and the reform prioritises them: the concessionary mechanism carries more weight on rural routes than on the intercity network. A universal fare subsidy that holds the same price for an inter-city express and a village sole-link bus is not designed around rural needs — it is a general price cap that happens to include rural routes. The targeted approach is more protective where it matters, at a fraction of the total cost.
Share if you think bus subsidies should be targeted at rural residents who need them, not spread uniformly.
The analyst's verdict
Cost reimbursement for bus passenger public service
Rationale
This line reimburses the cost of bus passenger public service — the bus counterpart of the rail passenger cost-reimbursement, covering the gap between bus fares and the cost of carriage. It is classified Phase-Out on the same consumption-subsidy grounds as the rail passenger line above; the key distinction is that on many rural routes the scheduled bus is the sole public transport link, used by exactly the low-income, elderly, and non-car-owning residents the targeted concessionary scheme is meant to protect — which means the concessionary mechanism carries more of the load here than on the rail network, and the design of the targeted scheme should reflect that weight. The six-year glide and the targeted scheme run in parallel with the rail line above.
Transition mechanism
Phase-Out over 6 years, linear glide, coordinated with the rail passenger line. Year 1 holds the line while the targeted concessionary-fare scheme is stood up; Years 2-6 move standard bus fares toward cost-reflective levels, with the concessionary scheme protecting low-income, elderly, student, and disabled travellers and carrying particular weight on sole-link rural routes. Net saving rises from 6,750.0 millió Ft in Year 1 to the full 40,500.0 millió Ft in Year 6, against which the targeted scheme's cost is a partial, explicitly-budgeted offset.
Affected groups
Bus passengers, paying fares moving toward the cost of carriage over six years, with targeted groups protected. Residents of settlements where the scheduled bus is the sole public transport link, for whom the concessionary scheme carries particular weight. The bus operators, whose revenue shifts toward fare income.
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