The renovation process of the 16 km long metro line is now in its fifth year. 

Last September, the Budapest Transit Company (BKV) wrote on the official website of the metro renovation that passenger traffic on the entire line could start in Q1 2023, meaning that the latest three-month delay piled up in just over a year.

The website now states that the central section of the line will be handed over to passengers in May 2023.

According to the current plans, the renovation work will be completed by March 2023, but after that, there will be inspections and trials by the authorities. Only after these have been completed will passenger services on M3 be able to start. 

At the end of 2020, following a lengthy debate about tunnel reconstruction, BKV said that the middle section of the line would be opened in January 2023. However, according to the report, this was already a revised date as in the fall of 2020, the Metro Renovation Project Directorate expected to launch passenger traffic on the line's central section, the last to undergo reconstruction, on December 7, 2022.

The renovation of the metro line started back in November 2017 with the upgrading of the northern section. The completion of these works was estimated for the end of 2018, but passenger services between Újpest-központ and Lehel tér stations resumed only on March 30, 2019. The southern section was completed on October 22, 2020.

The modernization of the middle section (between Lehel tér and Nagyvárad tér stations) started before the southern section was handed over at the end of 2019 and has been ongoing since then.

Under normal circumstances, approximately half a million people travel on the M3 line on weekdays, making it the busiest public transport route in Hungary.


MTI Photo: Zoltán Balogh