Israel's first urban light rail line began operating on Friday. This historic event was not be accompanied by any celebrations, ribbon cutting ceremonies, or arcane speeches by politicians. Despite their well-known lust for such events, Israel's politicians have learned that after so may breakdowns, flaws, delays, and disappointments, they will take no risk with the Jerusalem light rail.
The Jerusalem light rail that finally left the station on Friday is a mere shadow of what the government promised the capital's residents. Although this is only the running period, after which the train is supposed to achieve its promised performance, no one knows if that will happen in weeks or months.
Meanwhile, the light rail will crawl on tracks from Pisgat Zeev in the north, along Jaffa Street in the city center, to Mount Herzl in the west. The train will need 1:10 hours to make the 13.8-kilometer journey, compared with the 42 minutes promised in the contract between the government and franchiseeCityPass.
The biggest problem is the headway - the waiting time for the next train. It is supposed to be 4-5 minutes during peak hours and 8 minutes in off-peak hours. In practice it will be 10-12 minutes. This means that the light rail will be unable to carry all the passengers waiting for it, and it will offer no better service to Jerusalem's residents than the buses of Egged Israel Transport Cooperative Society Ltd.
The situation is further complicated by the fact that as long as the train does not meet its frequency requirement, there is no point to replace the current bus routes with a network of feeder lines to the train, which would only funnel passengers to a train that cannot pick them up.
The reason for the huge difference between promise and performance is the smart traffic lights system that is supposed to guarantee the light rail priority at intersections. CityPass claims that needless bureaucratic demands by the Jerusalem Municipality and the Ministry of Transport greatly delayed the installation of the smart traffic lights.
The municipality and ministry naturally blame the franchisee, claiming that it knew about the requirements in advance, but did not prepare in time.
CityPass asked to again postpone commercial operation of the light rail by two more months, but the arbitrators in its dispute with government rejected the request.
Last month, the arbitrators set August 19 as the launch date, come what may. They are also fed up by the endless delays in getting the train on track. CityPass has been working feverishly to install the smart traffic lights, but only 20 of the 60 lights are in place to date. Worse still, the pace of installation will slow to a crawl when the light rail begins commercial operations, and CityPass estimates that several months will pass until all the smart traffic lights are installed.
The headway problem is not the only big problem. Last week, it was discovered that the bus and train tickets are not synchronized. Only a few weeks ago, it was decided that the NIS 6.40 train fare will be valid for 90 minutes for a bus. But a trial run discovered that trains cannot read bus tickets and vice versa. Even though nothing prevented solving this problem weeks ago, the Ministry of Transport dragged its feet until the last moment and now the faults will be there for all to see.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on August 16, 2011
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