Israel's Ministries of Finance and Transport have sent a harshly critical letter to NTA Metropolitan Mass Transit System CEO Haim Glick protesting the years of delays in works to build the Tel Aviv light rail's Green Line and Purple Line. The letter is a veiled threat to take away work on the Tel Aviv Metro from NTA, if the government company now fails to meet the latest timetable that it has set.
The letter, which has been seen by "Globes," begins, "Ahead of the upcoming steering committee meeting, we wish to bring to your attention our lack of satisfaction in the works progress in building the Green and Purple Lines."
The coming meeting this week of the steering committee, with the participation of the two government ministries, promises to be especially stormy. NTA will be asked to present its work plan, which will allow the Purple Line to begin operating at the end of 2026 and the Green Line in mid-2027, as it committed to two years ago. These dates are already well behind the original timetable for the start of commercial operations in 2024.
The letter adds that the damage to Israel's economy of each year's delay in opening the Purple and Green Lines is NIS 1.5 billon.
The Purple Line was planned as the second Tel Aviv Metropolitan area light rail line after the Red Line, which is due to begin operating towards the end of this year. The Purple line will have 43 stations along its route from Tel Aviv, Givatayim, Ramat Gan, Givat Shmuel and onto Or Yehuda and Yehud-Monoson. According to the letter, the delays have been due to problems on the eastern sections of the line between Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer and along Roads 471, 461 and crossing Road 40 and access to the depot.
The situation is not much better on the western part of the line. NTA's preliminary work between the Arlozorov terminal and Hayarkon Street, which was due to already be completed, is still underway. Between Allenby Street and Derekh Hatayasim, work has not even begun, and this is wqork that should have begun at the start of 2019, indicating that the project is already three years behind schedule.
The Green Line is due to run from Herzliya in the north via Tel Aviv and Holon to Rishon Lezion. Here too chaos rules. Work has yet to begun on the Ramat Hahayal section in Tel Aviv, meaning a 23 month delay. The depot in Holon is also way behind schedule and there are also delays in works in Tel Aviv's Park Hayarkon and Lavon Street and in Rishon Lezion's Avraham Bar Street.
It was only last month that after many delays that the tender winners were named to build the two lines. The tender bids were received long ago but the government instructed NTA not to open the bids until the last buildings had been vacated on the Purple Line route in Tel Aviv's Kfar Shalem.
NTA has been operating without a chairperson since Ram Belnikov became Ministry of Finance director general 18 months ago. Adv. Maya Liquornik is expected to be appointed to the position in the near future.
The government will soon begin construction of the three lines of the Metro underground system for the Tel Aviv Metropolitan area at a cost of NIS 150 billion. NTA is also meant to manage the project.
However, the government is threatening that failure to progress adequately with the Purple and Green Lines could result in NTA being ousted from management of the most expensive and complex national transport project ever undertaken in Israel. The letter sent this week to Glick said, "As is known, the company may receive additional national projects and the way that existing projects are managed by the company will influence the progress of these projects in the future."
In recent years, there has already been talk at closed meetings in the Ministry of Finance against the plan of putting responsibility of the Metro into the hands of NTA. There have been proposals to give the Metro to a business company as was planned for the light rail Red Line before the project was nationalized and transferred to NTA.
NTA said, "The letter referred to was a great surprise when received by NTA due to the fact that works on the Green and Purple Lines are proceeding significantly and can be seen everywhere. It should be said that most of the delays mentioned in the letter are the direct result of various obstacles, including from municipal and infrastructure organizations, which are not under the control of the company. To our great regret, nothing has been done to solve and remove these obstacles, despite repeated warnings that NTA has raised to the relevant government agencies on the immediate need for a solution for those problems, before they harm the planned timetable and operating the lines on the planned date, and due to the expected entry of the franchisees who won the PPP tender to build the Green and Purple."
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on February 20, 2022.
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