Working assumption no. 1: efficient public transport is a critical strategic goal for Israel. Working assumption no. 2: the building of railroads is a key part of improving public transport. But anyone who holds these two working assumptions has good reason to worry that the proposed railway to Eilat has taken a big step forward to becoming a reality: the Southern Regional Planning and Development Commission last week approved the line's route; and the plan will soon go to the last station - the National Planning and Development Commission.
Why the worry? Because the Israeli government has decided to pour billions of shekels, and possibly tens of billions of shekels, on a railway line, it is spending the money on the wrong train. Although a train to Eilat has advantages - in a perfect world, a bullet train would depart from Tel Aviv to Eilat every hour - but government administration has to set priorities, and Israel has a long list of neglected areas, including transportation, where far more modest amounts than the ones which will channeled for construction of the Eilat railway line would perform miracles.
When talking about public transport, trains usually attract the most attention, but trains carry only 5% of all public transport passengers nationwide each day. Most Israelis who use public transport use buses to get to work or class. Every day, they encounter obsolete buses, unavailable information, complicated tickets, inefficient timetables, and awkward lines, with the result that people who can afford it, buy a car, or even two.
There is no need to spend billions of shekels to improve bus service, but nobody is advocating it because it is not sexy, and there aren’t enough fancy ribbon-cutting ceremonies where a "historic moment" can be announced to the nation. A railway to Eilat is a megalomaniacal project of the kind that politicians love, but passengers have more urgent needs.
Interestingly, there is an unusual agreement between Ministry of Finance officials and environmental organizations about a railway to Eilat. The Ministry of Finance opposes the line because it believes that resources should be channeled to large metropolitan transport projects. Israel's greatest transport disaster is the huge rush-hour traffic jams every day into the country's big cities. There are no traffic jams to Eilat.
A heavy price
A report by former Ministry of Finance director general Ezra Sadan found that a railway line to Eilat would cost the country billions of shekels. He says that the railway's fate would be same as the Lavie fighter jet in the 1980s. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Transport Yisrael Katz believe that a railway to Eilat can compete against the Suez Canal for global trade, but one Israeli transport expert, Prof. Eran Feitelson of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem says that this is nonsense.
The moment Egypt cuts transit fees for the Suez Canal, the economic model for the Eilat railway will collapse. And we have not yet discussed the question whether challenging a key support of the Egyptian economy is good idea at such a sensitive time.
Sadan's report was commissioned by the Nature and Parks Authority. The Ministry of Transport said in response that the Nature and Parks Authority should focus on protecting nature and on economic calculations. But when the Nature and Parks Authority, together with the Ministry of Environmental Protection, proposed a different route, which would cause less harm to the environment and Biblical landscapes of the Negev, the planning commission said that it would increase the Eilat railway's construction cost and rejected the alternative. In other words, there are tens of billions of shekels for a railway to Eilat at the expense of other critical economic needs, but when it comes to protecting nature, there is no money.
This means that the railway line will run for tens of kilometers on the surface, instead of through tunnels, cross nature reserves, rivers, and sensitive sites, such as Maaleh Akrabim and Ein Zinn, which will require the construction of 14,000 pylons and kilometers of iron bridges, and run along on part of the route on a 50-meter high battery - the height of a multistory building. During construction, mountains of concrete infrastructures will be built at tunnel entrances, along with waste and truck traffic, mountains will be flattened, and flora and fauna will be devastated.
Does a train to Eilat justify such a heavy price? At the moment, there is a good reason to doubt it.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on February 17, 2013
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