Budapest has had public transportation since the beginning of the nineteenth century, before the city was even unified. Regular buses began serving Pest in 1832. The unification of Buda, Obuda, and Pest into the modern city in 1872 fueled an interest in municipal planning, with the Council of Public Works responsible for major improvements in public transport. In 1874, a steam engine cogwheel train was constructed to traverse the side of Szechenyi hill . This train in still in service, although now it is primarily a tourist attraction. In 1889 electric trams replaced the cogwheel train as a quicker, more efficient mode of transportation for that corridor. Electric trams--still in use today--were introduced into the city in 1887, and one year later the first rails were laid for a suburban train system. These services supplemented a network of nearly 50 km of horsecar routes. In 1896, Budapest opened Europes first underground rail system, the Metro. By 1890, over 70 million passengers travelled by public transport each year. Thirty years later, that figure was 365 million.

In addition to the mass transit system, the Council also established a comprehensive system of ring roads and connecting boulevards. The parallel avenues of this network, linked the city by highway to the countryside and neighboring nations. The roadways also expanded links between Buda and Pest by building five connecting bridges to supplement the Chain Bridge, built in 1849. Until the Margit Bridge was constructed in 1876, the Chain Bridge was the only trans-Danube passage in the winter months, when ice forced the ferry into drydock.

This roadway network was extremely efficient in the horse and buggy era . Budapest was slow to enter the automotive age. When the Royal Hungarian Automobile Club was founded in 1900, only 213 cars were to be found in Budapest. However, today over 500,000 automobiles travel the city, and the roads designed at the end of the last century are the cause of great traffic and pollution as we enter the next.

Today, more than two billion passengers pass through Budapest's public transit system annually. More than sixty percent of the 400,000 people who venture into the city each day do it by means of the metro,the public buses, trams, trolleys, or suburban electric railway. A small number also travel by some uncommon forms of transit. This complex system is coordinated by the Budapest Transport Authority (BKV), established by the socialist government after World War II. The pre-war public transit networks had been destroyed by the war, so BKV had the opportunity to create the new system entirely. Extensive and useful public transportation is crucial to socialist city planning ,and the services are heavily subsidized. Budapest's system reflects a belief in centralized planning. Passage on any of the modes costs 50 Forints (approximatly $.35).