The saddest thing about the Tel Aviv light rail project is that no one is upset about the bad news it makes. Last week, the report to the Ministry of Finance by the project's outside auditor stated that the inaugural ride on the line will be pushed back from 2017 to 2022, and maybe even later. The budget has already ballooned from NIS 10.8 billion to NIS 14 billion. It is doubtful if any Israeli believes that this is the final word.
Why should we believe? This is a project that was the subject of a lament by Natan Alterman 77 years ago, in 1936. 40 years ago, in 1973, Prime Minister Golda Meir ordered the project to go full steam ahead, and in 1996 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Tel Aviv Mayor Roni Milo held a ribbon cutting ceremony.
Construction of the railway has gone from the state to private hands and back again, and each time its horizon became more distant. The Hebrew homepage of NTA Metropolitan Mass Transit System Ltd., the government company entrusted with the project, states, "Site under construction. We apologize." Somebody there has a sense of humor.
The traffic jam-inured public has already accepted the interminable postponements in the light rail's inauguration date. The problem is that its seems that the entire public transport and mass transit system in metropolitan Tel Aviv is stuck in place, and we cannot afford this.
The number of private cars entering Tel Aviv increases daily, and the average rush hour travel speed at the city's entrances will soon fall to somewhere between six and ten kilometers. The economic damage from the congestion will rise to NIS 25 billion a year. With numbers like these, and with millions of people suffering from a failed public transport system and air pollution, we must not sit on our backside waiting for the light rail train to leave the station.
Transport experts believe that the light rail is not the optimal solution for central Israel's traffic problem. It is megalomaniacal, expensive, too complicated in terms of engineering and infrastructures, and unsuited for a densely population metropolis like Tel Aviv. But even if we assume that the project has passed the point of no return, there are a lot of things which could be done before it finally becomes a reality.
Is it any wonder that buses move so slowly?
An immediate and major upgrade to the bus network in metropolitan Tel Aviv does not have to wait for the light rail. It is possible to speed up the installation of advanced electronic signs at bus stops, place accessible and user-friendly maps at bus stops and on the buses, make bus stops accessible for the handicapped, aggressively enforce schedules, greatly improve the information sites at the Ministry of Finance and the bus companies, greatly increase the number of routes, and give buses priority.
Greater Tel Aviv has 14 meters of bus lanes per 1,000 residents, compared with an average of 150 meters in Western metropolises. Is it any wonder that buses move so slowly? To change this, there is no need to wait for the light rail Messiah. The revolution should be bus rapid transport (BRT) to serve Tel Aviv and the entrance to the city: lines of high-capacity buses with high speed ticketing, large doors, and priority lanes.
MK Dov Khenin (Hadash) once called BRT "a subway without the trains and without the tunnels". BRT lines do not need earthworks that last for years and cost billions of shekels. NTA is already working on several BRT lines, and moving them forward is strategically important for the economy.
In fact, BRT is far more urgent than the light rail, which won't go anywhere soon. If Tel Aviv were to have a network of BRT lines operating within 2-3 years, we might discover that a subway really isn't necessary at all, and there will be no need to lower the flag to half-mast every time a report is published saying that the light rail's inaugural journey will be postponed by a few more years.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on July 9, 2013
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