Construction is currently underway on express lanes to Tel Aviv on the Ayalon Road (Route 20). The lanes are scheduled to open gradually next year, and will extend from Rishon LeZion in the south to Shefayim in the north, with parking lots for thousands of vehicles at each end. The parking lot in Shefayim has space for 7,000 cars, and in Rishon LeZion it is planned to accommodate 3,500 cars.
In addition, in February, the Ministries of Transportation and Finance issued another tender for the construction of an additional highway on Route 5, between the Qesem Junction and the Eastern Glilot Junction. As part of the project, huge parking lots will be built: a parking lot in Qesem for 4,000 cars, a parking lot at the Tikva Junction for 4,000 cars, and a parking lot at the Morasha Junction for 7,000 cars.
The project is being promoted as a public-private partnership. A concessionaire will be selected to finance, plan, build and operate the project for 25 years. The economic model is based on the contractor financing the project benefiting from the revenues collected for driving on the express lanes. Shuttle buses and vehicles carrying three or more passengers will travel on the express lanes for free.
These projects on Routes 5 and 20 are based on the model that has been operating for many years on Route 1 between Ben Gurion Airport and the Kibbutz Galuyot junction at the entrance to Tel Aviv with a large parking lot next to the Shapirim junction. This parking lot was recently expanded but the route has suffered from low demand in recent years.
Ultimately, all major roads leading to the Tel Aviv metropolitan area (Routes 1, 2, 5 and 20) will be served by large parking lots and toll-free express lanes.
Restrictions: No passenger counting technology
In their announcement, the Finance and Transportation Ministries promised that the new projects would “significantly reduce traffic congestion on the roads leading to the Gush Dan metropolitan area.” But this model, which Israel has been pushing hard, is highly controversial and there is no evidence that it will ease traffic congestion.
There is no technology yet capable of counting the number of passengers in a vehicle, while maintaining the restrictions of the privacy protection law, which prevents the effective operation of the enforcement and control mechanism. However, the main controversy lies in the planning and transportation policy of these roads, which is based on a planning policy that produces suburbs.
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Government ministries believe that because suburbs are built in satellite cities, it is not possible to provide good and efficient public transport services because the houses are spread over a large area, and there is no population density in these locations that would economically justify frequent public transport, so the frequency is low. The roads to and from these suburbs are also unattractive, with narrow and winding roads creating “long and slow queues”.
The ministries believe that the prevailing culture in the country requires every family to own at least one car, and often more. To prevent these cars from entering Tel Aviv, huge parking lots must be built so that drivers can leave their cars and take free buses to the urban business center.
But these thousands of parking spaces will persuade travelers to continue using cars in a vicious circle that cannot be broken. With 850,000 cars traveling the Ayalon Road every day across the country, experts question the state’s purpose in solving the problem by investing in parking lots that will quickly fill up with thousands of vehicles. They fear that this solution will not bring any real benefit to the roads and will not solve, even partially, the problem in the next 20 years.
Israel’s population growth rate is the highest in the West, and the space that empties on the road is immediately filled with additional cars whose drivers would have traveled at other times or on other routes.
The cost is 5 billion shekels and the benefits are minimal.
The two expressway projects on Routes 5 and 20 are estimated to cost NIS 5 billion, with private sector funding in common. Dr. Yoav Lerman, an urban planning expert, believes the benefits of such a massive investment are minimal. “The above-ground light rail line costs NIS 5 billion, transports thousands of people daily and changes the land use around it. The expressway serves 11,000 vehicles. This is a great service for private car users who live in the suburbs in areas where public transportation cannot be well supported due to the construction plan, and it actually strengthens the suburbs. It does not change patterns or open up land for investment like public transportation projects,” he says.
If a person lives in a town like Shoham, then obviously such a route helps. He can take the car, park it in Shapirim and then take the shuttle bus from there.
“It might help them. But if we have a certain amount of money, how do we spend it? Why not finance a taxi to take them from their homes to their destinations? Because that is very expensive. Even unlimited shuttle bus services, and huge investment in parking lots and roads, are very expensive when the efficiency is low, the costs per passenger are very high and the impact on land use is negative. Meanwhile, while they are trying to provide a solution, they are building more and more places like Shoham and increasing this form of useless construction.”
“There is certainly no solution for these areas because people in the middle-class suburbs will not be able to use public transportation,” adds Dr. Lerman. “Congestion charges will help these people more because they will be able to travel quickly to the capital, and it may make sense for them to pay less and travel during rush hour to Tel Aviv. Shoham should be a lesson for other places, not a model.”
“It’s about the public policy concept in Israel known as ‘both this and that,’” adds Tamar Keinan of the Transportation Today and Tomorrow Foundation. “Everyone seems to be in favor of public transportation, but let’s give more impetus to cars for the sake of the poor who have to travel on regular, crowded routes. This situation is really leading us nowhere, because without giving real priority to public transportation, people won’t switch to it. Those who travel by it are prisoners and have no choice, and in order to convince the entire public or the majority of the public to use public transportation sometimes, you have to create real priority.”
“This project was born out of sin from the idea of another project through which you can make money, while if you want efficient public transportation you must create exclusive routes for it, enough of this deception.”
On the planners’ claim that the service is designed to help suburbanites who have no choice but to travel by car, Keenan says: “That’s exactly the point. The state continues to promote suburbs, continues to promote rich and wealthy cities, provides a transport solution and increases demand for it. It’s fine if people want to live in houses with big gardens, but there’s a limit to what the state can do to support and subsidise that. Building these roads is in the interests of the suburbs, it encourages and promotes movement to the suburbs.”
This article was published in Globes, Israeli Business News – en.globes.co.il – on July 17, 2024.
© Copyright Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd., 2024.
