The Museum Underground Parking Lot has Opened in the City Park
2020/12/07
Implementing the vision of a car-free City Park has reached a landmark: the Museum Underground Parking Lot has been opened as part of the Liget Budapest Project. The facility provides green parking on Dózsa György Road for park visitors and local residents, announced László Baán, ministerial commissioner for the Liget Budapest Project.
Besides the rehabilitation and enlargement of the park’s green areas, one of the main goals of the Liget Budapest Project, aimed at the renewal of the capital’s City Park, was to slash car traffic, which had been stifling the park for decades and, indeed, is still a huge environmental burden for the Liget, said László Baán, ministerial commissioner for the Liget Budapest Project. From now on, adults and children visiting the car-free City Park can spend their leisure time, do exercise and play in an environment that is significantly quieter and has much improved air quality. The first step towards realising the goal of a car-free public park was to eliminate surface parking on Ötvenhatosok Square; thus, the opening of the three-storey Museum Underground Parking Lot with 800 parking spaces is a fantastic landmark. During the emergency period due to the Covid-19 pandemic, parking is free in the underground parking lot for all between 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., as stipulated by the government’s relevant decree.
The fully accessible underground parking lot has designated spaces for mobility vehicles and motorbikes, while those with electric cars can benefit from parking spaces with EV charging stations, and cyclists can use the enclosed bike storage area on the top level of the parking facility fitted with changing rooms and showers and safely accessible on a ramp reserved for bikers.
The Museum Underground Parking Lot is an ideal choice for those coming to the Városliget Sports Centre and the running track, as well as for families visiting the Main Playground, and park visitors in general; moreover, it makes life easier for people working in the nearby offices and the residents of the surrounding districts, the latter of whom can benefit from reduced parking fees. Two hundred parking spaces can be used from 5 p.m. to 9 a.m. free of charge by residents of districts 6, 7 and 14 with valid parking permits issued by the local government after a one-time registration payment of HUF 2,000 is made and registration on the Liget Budapest Project’s homepage is completed.
A unique and spectacular feature of the underground parking lot unmatched by any other in Europe is the reproductions of masterpieces selected from Hungary’s national collections in the facility’s interiors, which not only enhance the visual experience but also help visitors to find their way around. The walls are decorated by reproductions of a geometrical, nonfigurative masterpiece each by 12 prominent Hungarian artists selected from the collections of the Museum of fine Arts, the Hungarian National Gallery and the Vasarely Museum, lending an inimitable character to the new facility and matching the spirit of the cultural traditions of the City Park and its overall renewal, noted László Baán.
01 12
The above-ground level of the Museum Underground Parking Lot – once occupied by a car park paved with basalt stones – has been replaced by a new walkway, called the Városliget Promenade, the middle section of which is a resting area fitted with atmospheric evening lighting and modern seating furniture, said Benedek Gyorgyevics, the CEO of Városliget Zrt. The recently renewed area located between the new building of the Museum of Ethnography and the Városliget Theatre, to be constructed on the corner of Dózsa György and Ajtósi Dürer roads – both realised as part of the Liget Budapest Project – has more than ten thousand square metres of new green surface, where more than 100 leafy trees, 4,000 shrubs and some 40 thousand flower bulbs and perennials have been planted. Visitors can also enjoy the 600-square-metre resting area with seating furniture stretching between the elegant promenade and the park.
The process of making the City Park car-free has not ended yet, stressed the CEO of Városliget Zrt., since additional underground car parks are planned to be built in the future and after the Kós Károly Promenade is made completely car-free, the City Park will be greener and far more liveable.