Big changes are taking place deep beneath Tel Aviv’s Ibn Gbirol Street. TBM tunnel boring machines have passed below the junction with Nordau Street and have reached what will become Arlozorov Station. The Tel Aviv light rail Green Line will extend from Rishon Lezion in the south via an underground section in Tel Aviv to Herzliya in the north.
The NTA Metropolitan Mass Transit System says that works have slowed because of the war but even before last October work on the Green Line and the Purple Line (Tel Aviv to Or Yehuda and Givat Shmuel) had encountered delays. The delays in building these two light rail lines impacts the residents of the Tel Aviv Metropolitan region and those who work there who desperately need a mass transit system, while meanwhile the roads become more and more jammed.
Even after the postponement an overambitious target date
The steering committee of the Ministries of Transport and Finance is meant to have convened to approve an additional postponement in the light rail project but the meeting itself has been postponed time and again. Meanwhile, the government feels that even the new target date when decided on will be irrelevant.
The steering committee is expected to announce that the Purple Line will officially start operating at the end of 2027 (having been postponed from 2025 and then 2026) and the Green Line will officially start operating at the end of 2028 (having been postponed from 2025 and then 2027). But sources close to the progress in work say that even those dates are overambitious.
"When you set a date for the end of the year, everyone understands that the real date is at least the middle of the following year. The Green Line will not open before 2030," says a source familiar with the details. Even if after the lines are operating nobody will remember the delays, postponing the date of the line's opening means further harm to residents, public transport users, drivers and business owners. It is enough to see how deserted Ben Yehuda Street is in Tel Aviv to understand this.
The reasons: water and electricity infrastructures that no one knew about
NTA is responsible for carrying out the first part of the project known as Infra 1, which includes clearing land, earthworks, infrastructures, etc. The second part of the project, known as Infra 2, includes laying the tracks, systems and trains and is undertaken in collaboration with the private sector franchisees. For the Green Line, Electra, Dan and Alstom who have finally closed financing for the project after many delays because of the war. And for the Purple Line, Shapir Engineering, which was able to close financing before the war.
The reasons for the delays are many but perhaps the most major of them was already in the first stage - the difficulty in coordinating between Israel’s infrastructure bodies. Thus, during excavations for the Green Line, communications, water and electricity infrastructures that no one knew were discovered. They were not mapped and the responsible companies did not know they existed. On the Purple Line, on Ben Yehuda and Arlozorov streets, project managers waited months for Israel Electric Corp. to connect the systems to electricity, and the list goes on.
Even the municipal elections slowed things down. The Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality feared public criticism due to the nuisance, upheaval and accessibility on streets where works were being carried out. NTA says that the war caused the infrastructure sector to grind to a halt because it almost completely relies on Palestinian workers while international companies sent their employees back home.
Another factor, although it is disputed that it caused delays was the postponement in opening the tender envelopes for the second phase of the project, following opposition by Minister of Transport Miri Regev to expropriations in Kfar Shalem. The expropriations were finally carried out after Regev was replaced by Merav Michaeli. Delays were exacerbated by difficulties in closing the financing for the Green Line.
It is also difficult to ignore the ability of NTA to manage projects. Despite the tremendous efforts of its employees, it does not meet its targets. The control company, which was set up by the government ministries, already reported last year, even before the war, concern about not completing transmission shafts and station areas on time, buffers (time intervals for cases of malfunctions and delays) that were too low, and milestones that are not well defined. They also warned that diverting all of the company's resources to the Red Line would harm the targets of the Green and Purple lines in the future. In recent years, NTA has consistently disputed the conclusions of the control company, which was often right in its assessments, and the State Comptroller has also commented on this.
Even in Jerusalem, most projects are delayed, and not only because of the war. The Green Line in the capital has been delayed until 2026, and the section that goes through Bar Ilan Street does not even have an opening date, due to rioting by Haredi extremists, protesting construction of the line in the neighborhood.
The opening of the Red Line extensions in Jerusalem has been postponed to November this year, although it was supposed to start operating last year. Progress on the Blue Line is in disarray after the international companies that won the tender have abandoned the project because of the war and its impact.
These join a chain of delays in other projects: the fourth rail track along the Ayalon, which was meant to ease the railway bottleneck in the center of the country, the train electrification project that has been postponed for at least two years, the construction of the 431 railway line from Rishon Lezion to Modi'in, which is being delayed due to a major dispute between Israel Railways and Shikun & Binui, which is building the project.
The result: spending is cut and productivity does not rise
Due to all these delays, the Ministry of Transport’s spending forecasts have also been cut. Since 2020, government spending on transport infrastructure has been around NIS 20 billion per year, but the ministry's implementation companies have been unable to reach this ceiling. The budget forecast for 2025 will remain at NIS 20 billion compared with the original plan to increase spending to NIS 24 billion.
Spending must increase for productivity to increase. A report published by the Bank of Israel in January 2023 stated that Israel currently invests about 1.5% of GDP per year on transport infrastructure and must double the investment in order to close the gap in the ratio of public capital inventory to GDP and in the quality of infrastructure between Israel and other developed countries by 2050.
The National Infrastructures Law, which was enacted as part of the 2023 Economic Arrangements Law, was designed to remove barriers and harness all state bodies to accelerate infrastructure projects, but its realization is still not being felt on the ground. The government ministries predict that by the end of the decade spending will reach NIS 30 billion, due, among other things, to progress on the Metro project. But progress on current projects says something about the ability to accelerate the Metro project, and financial investment alone will not necessarily help.
Responses "Proud that we brought international bodies"
NTA said, "Despite the complex reality, work on the Purple and Green light rail lines is in full swing (as can easily be seen on every block of Gush Dan above and below ground).
"The steering committee is supposed to update the schedules of the lines, in accordance with the contractual agreements signed with the franchisees, which oblige them to meet milestones from the moment the order to start work is received -this update has not been done so far.
"The original schedules did not take into account the length of time it would take to close the financing that the franchisees must complete (about a year for the Purple Line and 18 months for the Green line), partly due to the influence of international and geopolitical issues.
"Nevertheless, NTA is proud of its success in bringing leading international groups to Israel to establish the light rail and Metro networks despite the difficulties and challenges created by the war: the shortage of professional manpower, dealing with professionals bodies abroad, imports and more."
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on August 8, 2024.
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd., 2024.