Budapest marks 100 years of taxi service

A plaque was inaugurated in Budapest on Saturday to mark the hundredth anniversary of the start of taxi services in the capital.

The plaque commemorates Samu Haltenberger, the founder of Autotaxi, which put the first taxi on the streets of the capital on June 1, 1913.

Present at the ceremony were Budapest mayor Istvan Tarlos; Tibor Szunomar, who heads Fotaxi, the legal successor of Autotaxi; and Bela Kirschner, the grandson of Samu Haltenberger.

Tarlos said Haltenberger left an indelible mark on the history of public transportation in Hungary, and he thanked Fotaxi for carrying on the tradition.

Fotaxi is Budapest's biggest taxi service, with a fleet of more than 800 vehicles.

Szunomar said the capital's first taxi company was responsible for other innovations, too: its "Drost" dispatch system allowed passengers to order cabs by phone, and the company was the first in the world to use an automated car wash, cutting the time to wash taxis from 40 to just two and a half minutes.

Kirschner said Autotaxi had grown quickly: thirty years after its establishment, the company had 988 taxis, 92 buses and a staff of more than 2,700.

To coincide with the centennial, Budapest's Transport Museum opened a temporary exhibition on the history of taxi service in the capital. The exhibition can be seen for a month.

Photo

vissza