Public road leading to the Transportation Minister’s hunting lodge gets full renovation

Hungary’s public road building company is spending half a billion forints per kilometer on a scarcely used road that happens to lead to a castle owned by the Minister of Transportation János Lázár. Lázár previously suspended over 2000 billion forints of investment in infrastructure development due to budget concerns. The castle road’s rebuilding however was given the green light, despite costing twice as much per kilometer as the other ongoing road construction project in the region.

Driving on Csongrád-Csanád county’s road 4413, one rarely has to worry about oncoming traffic. The 23-kilometer long road sees extremely light traffic daily, seeing at most 345 cars per day . The road woud highly be a priority target for renovation, especially in today’s financial environment: after the governing Fidesz-KDNP coalition’s latest victory in 2022, János Lázár, Minister of Construction and Transport, suspended around HUF 2,100 billion of investments. This cost-cutting was necessary after the European Union froze much of Hungary’s fuding over concerns of corruption and rule-of-law violations.

Despite that, local news portal szeged365.hu reported in August  that “road reconstruction works will soon start on the more than 6 km section of the Algyő-Maroslele road (4413). The total gross investment of HUF 3.3 billion will affect the section between the access road to Nagyfa and the M43 motorway flyover”.

According to the Transport Information System and Database (KIRA), a 12-kilometers long section of road 4413 between the Tisza Bridge in Algyő and the M43 main road is being upgraded, up to the prison of the penitentiary in Nagyfa.

Direct road to Lázár’s estate

The road also leads to the Batida estate, a hunting lodge belonging to Mr. Lázár. As Átlátszó previously reported, a hunting company associated with János Lázár had acquired hunting rights for twenty years on the largest hunting ground in Csongrád County. In the meantime, a secretive lawyer, Jenő Kulik, has begun building a huge hunting lodge in Batida, a part of Hódmezővásárhely, who is connected to Lázár on several levels.

The local government has also amended the local building regulations to accommodate the large investment. At the time, the locals also associated the large-scale project with their former mayor, the then Prime Minister, but János Lázár, when asked by Átlátszó, said that he only knew about the project by right of his neighbour and was not personally involved.

At the moment, the castle can only be reached with a detour: with the 3.3 billion renovation, the minister can drive on asphalt as smooth as glass almost all the way to the castle.

More important roads are only getting a cheap makeover

According to the state road building company Public Road’s website, only one other road improvement project has been approved this year, for a total of of 2.5 billion HUF.  Unlike road 4413, these are financed from remaining EU funds. Work will be carried out in two places: on the 4401 Szarvas-Szentes link road for almost 4 km and on the 5514 road crossing Mórahalom for about 4.5 km. The reconstruction will cost HUF 294 million per kilometre.

On the 5514 road, 3620 vehicles a day are on the road, on the other 953. Both of these locations see heavier traffic, yet cost much less than the castle road’s improvement, which is being carried out by a company of László Szijj, a well-known oligarch close to the government.

Road 4413 stripped back to its foundations. Photo by the author.

“The price per kilometre of each road rehabilitation project depends to a large extent on the technical content of the project, the geographical conditions, the extent of the interventions and the technology used, so it is not worth comparing the total investment prices of two road rehabilitation projects by simply dividing the costs back” –  Public Road replied when asked about the price difference between the two projects. “In projects included in the Operational Programme for Spatial and Urban Development, the existing pavement surface is prepared and then reinforced with 2 layers of asphalt.”

They explained that road 4413 is undergoing a more complex renovation:

the existing road structure is being completely demolished, and will be replaced with completely new asphalt layers. In other words, a much stronger road will be built near Algyő than the one built with EU funding.

According to the publicly available pavement condition data (31.12.2023), 569 km of the 1,040 km of secondary roads in Csongrád-Csanád County are in inadequate or poor condition.

We asked which category is 4413, and what made its reconstruction a priority?

They replied, that „the overall project is a priority from a technical and road management point of view, as it also received a 5, i.e. a poor rating, in the latest National Road Data Bank survey. In addition, the current and future function of the road section in the region is also important, as it serves as a bypass to the main road 47 in case of need, and the renovation has already taken into account the fact that if the development of the main road and the works on the Tisza bridge in Algyő start and complete road closures are necessary, vehicles will be able to use this bypass, and this road also serves the access to the National Penitentiary Institute in Nagyfa”.

Translated by Zalán Zubor. The Hungarian version of this story was written by Csaba Segesvári.