Volánbusz. Introduction

There's a bus on the picture.

Volánbusz Közlekedési Zártkörűen Működő Részvénytársaság is a passenger bus company with a history of more than 95 years. Founded in 1927 as MAVART, the company initially had only 30 buses; today we provide services with almost 6000 vehicles nationwide, as the third largest public company in Hungary in terms of the number of employees.

The core business of our company is a scheduled public bus transport service, ensuring that our passengers can travel to work, school and vital institutions on a daily basis. Efficient operations and high quality service are the result of the combined efforts of some 17,500 colleagues, including about 10,500 actual bus drivers.

At a national level, we ensure daily, direct and regular links between the county seats, the most important regions and tourist destinations and the capital city. Our intercity services cover 3,144 of Hungary's 3,155 settlements, and we provide local transport in 62 settlements around the country. On top of that, we have been operating scheduled international services for decades.

The quality and high standards of our services are of paramount importance to us, and Volánbusz Zrt. has the strictest certified quality management system. We carry 540 million passengers on more than 17 million services, covering almost 450 million kilometres a year, with a constantly rejuvenated and modernised fleet.

Since January 2021, Volánbusz Zrt. has been owned by MÁV Zrt. As a result of the unified strategic management of the two transport companies, and the coordinated development of rail and road passenger transport services, we are able to offer our passengers increasingly high-quality, modern and environmentally friendly services.

We aim to develop and ensure a transparent, regular and reliable timetable in practice, even in the most difficult road traffic conditions. We make travelling even more convenient for our passengers by offering advance ticket and seat booking, and online ticket and season ticket purchase. MÁV-START Zrt. and Volánbusz Zrt. are committed to expanding their joint sales channels with the aim of creating a 21st century public transport platform across both settlements and services. The group has introduced a number of common fare products, and the range of bus tickets and season tickets available on the MÁV mobile application and at the ticket offices of MÁV-START Zrt. is continuously expanding. With the country and county passes available since May 2023, fare pooling has been achieved in Hungary: passengers can travel with a single ticket type on all the vehicles of the MÁV-Volán Group, including trains, local buses and HÉV (suburban rail) and even on GYSEV lines, without restriction, throughout the country or a particular selected county.

The harmonisation of timetables, the creation of a single point of sale and the creation of a tariff community, aim to encourage more and more people to choose public transport instead of individual travel, thus contributing to a significant reduction in emissions and the creation of a more liveable environment. The sustainability objectives of the MÁV-Volán Group include the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions of transport operators, green digitisation, efficient energy management, reducing the environmental impact of waste and the transition to a circular economy, as well as the development of environmentally friendly, sustainable corporate operations.

As part of our company's vehicle rejuvenation programme launched in 2018, we have, so far, put more than 2,300 new and new-to-market buses into service. As a result of vehicle purchases, the carbon emissions of our fleet was reduced by 13,000 tonnes in 2022 from the 338,000 tonnes of 2019, which is equivalent to the annual carbon emissions of more than 7,200 passenger cars. Under the Green Bus Programme, the Hungarian government is providing HUF 36 billion over ten years, to support the replacement of the vehicle fleet with the purchase of electric buses in settlements with a population of more than 25,000. Our company applied for, and won, a grant under the programme to purchase electric buses and build the charging infrastructure needed to operate them. In order to develop our vehicle fleet in an environmentally friendly way, we have established a joint company with MVM Mobiliti Kft., the company responsible for the introduction of green transport, which has been operating under the name Mobiliti Volánbusz Kft. since February 2021. In 2021, we acquired 41 electric buses, followed by a further 60 electric and 164 CNG (gas powered) vehicles in 2022 and 2023.

Volánbusz Zrt. has had a certified quality management system (MSZ EN ISO 9001:2001) since 2001. Since 2014, our company has been operating an integrated management system with the MSZ EN ISO 14001:2005 environmental management standard and the MSZ 28001:2008 occupational health and safety management standard, and since 2015 with the MSZ EN ISO 50001:2012 energy management standard. Since 2017, the system has applied all the changes and been compliant with MSZ EN ISO 9001:2015 and MSZ EN ISO 14001:2015, and since 2020 with MSZ ISO 45001:2018 and MSZ EN ISO 50001:2018 standards. Volánbusz Zrt. successfully extended the validity of all its certificates in 2023, too.