The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

The red line fiasco: why don't you take the light rail today, and why no one takes responsibility for it - voila! news

2022-11-30T04:16:11.176Z


The red line fiasco: why you won't take the light rail today, and why no one is taking responsibility for it


NTA chairman of the state audit committee on the expected delay in the operation of the light rail (photo: Knesset Channel, editing: Nir Chen)

If everything had gone as planned, the films would have been cut today (Wednesday).

All the dignitaries would take credit in their speeches about the historic moment, and then we would go down the escalators to one of the ten underground stations of the Red Line.

We would board one of the new cars of the light rail, which arrives with a frequency of one and a half minutes in its underground part and twice as often in the rest, and arrive like a dream within ten minutes, even at peak traffic, from the Arlozorov Lipo station or Petah Tikva.



On November 30, 2022, we were supposed to feel for a moment as we have felt in London, Paris or New York for more than a century, and even in Cairo and Tehran for 40 years.

Enjoy a modern transportation system, reach the busy Gush Dan by Israel Railways and switch to the light rail, while we bypass the traffic jams, the beeps and the annoying ones.



This was not supposed to be the solution that would remove the traffic jams, but a significant moment in the creation of the alternative to the private car in the busy and populated area of ​​the country.

The first of three lines, 24 km from Petah Tikva to Bat Yam, through Bnei Brak, Ramat Dan and Tel Aviv, half of which are underground. 18.7 billion shekels paid from our tax money, in the most expensive civil project the state has carried out to date and one of the most justified.



Despite this , today we will get into the private car, bus, train or scooter as usual, for another pleasant and relaxing day on the roads of Gush Dan. The red line, which was originally supposed to start operating in 2017 and has since been postponed six times, will not transport passengers today nor tomorrow. The 240 thousand people who are supposed to They would travel in it according to the forecasts, arrive at work as usual, tired, crushed and probably late again.

More in Walla!

  • Public transportation on Saturday: I wish, but it won't really happen

  • The stations in Bnei Brak, the conflicting contracts - and the elections: does Michaeli's announcement amount to a political farce?

  • The Netflix of the medical world can save your life

The most expensive civil project, and one of the most justified, of the country.

The light rail (photo: Reuven Castro)

This is not the first infrastructure and transportation project that suffers from delays in the schedule;

But the current rejection breaks all records of insolence and lack of transparency on the part of the state.

Outgoing Transportation Minister Rav Michaeli has been avoiding admitting for a year that even on her shift the train will not operate, and the CEO of the state-owned NTA company Haim Glick has avoided appearing in front of the public and telling him the truth.

Just last week he took advantage of an appearance at a public conference to officially announce for the first time that the Red Line will only open in March 2023. Exactly 50 years since Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir first agreed to allocate funding for planning a subway in Tel Aviv.



The NTA, and the Ministry of Transportation, which is supposed to supervise it, join hands with accusations towards Alstom, the manufacturer of the Red Line's safety system, which in the summer was discovered to cause emergency braking on the train and required long weeks of repairs and improvements. This, even though the NTA themselves admitted that the tower-of-Babylon structure they chose For the red line, two different Chinese manufacturers to supply the trains and the control system, together with a safety system from France and a German company that will be responsible for the integration, does not work.

In fact, the green and purple line will have one provider for all systems together.



The State Comptroller's report published last week reveals the extent to which the transportation elite worked on us, knowing about the apparent delay, and avoiding showing it to the public.

Not only for passengers, but also for many business owners, veterans who struggled to keep their heads above water during the works, to newcomers who rented spaces and recruited workers to make a living from the large crowd that the Rkel would bring, only to discover that they would have to pay a few more months of rent on empty space.

Worked on us.

Michaeli (Photo: Reuven Castro)

According to the report published by auditor Matanyahu Engelman, already in August 2021, the control company forwarded a letter to the Ministry of Transportation in which it listed ten issues that, in its opinion, could endanger compliance with the schedules for the opening of the line for commercial use in November 2022. Among the issues raised are the arrival rate of the railcar fleet;

completion of the signaling system;

safety programs;

coordination with the security and rescue forces;

and the process of transferring the arrays to the Tevel operating company, of Egged, Shenzhen Metro and the Chinese CCECC.

The control company estimated that the delay in the activation date could reach four to six months.



In October 2021, NTA replied that it is aware of the risks and is working to minimize them, in order to meet the schedules for the commercial operation of the Red Line in November 2022. In June 2022, NTA further insisted, in a letter to the state auditor, that the project is proceeding according to the planned schedule, and that the control company is simply exaggerating : "NATA, being a controlled executive body, sets realistic but ambitious goals, while the control company recommends committing to conservative goals."



The Ministry of Transportation then informed the auditor that "the Ministry and the NTA company are making the most of the necessary efforts to meet the schedules for operating the line.

The control company expects the Ministry and the decision makers in the government to have concerns and gaps that it identifies in the rate of progress of the completion of the works and the rate of inspections in the project.

The Ministry of Transportation holds ongoing discussions about this with the NTA management, which is confident of meeting the schedules."

"The costs of the postponement have not yet been calculated."

Haim Glick (Photo: Reuven Castro)

Today we know who had realistic goals and who had conservative goals.

A senior official at the Ministry of Transportation tried to explain this morning why the management of the ministry refused to appear before the public, apologize for the postponement, commit to a new date, and estimate the price of the additional postponement - which is expected to cost hundreds of millions of shekels, in additional payment demands from the project's contractors, maintenance costs to maintain the system until it is operational, And indirect damages from not improving the traffic situation and reducing air pollution in the wake of transferring hundreds of thousands to electric transportation.



According to him, "There is a malfunction in the signaling system that caused a delay in operation. The role of the steering committee that meets frequently is to make sure that the current timetables for the operation of the line are applicable, and a more certain picture of the situation has not yet been received from the NTA and the control notebook that accompanies the project."



The Ministry of Transportation stated that "The NTA Company manages the Red Line and is responsible for its construction and operation."

The representatives of the state in the steering committee, the ministries of transportation and finance, accompany the company, and help in every way to complete the project, without compromises regarding the safety and operation of the service



. If it weren't for the signaling malfunction that was discovered during the regular tests, the line could have been launched at the end of November. The control company sometimes operates according to different considerations than the NTA, and it also did not foresee the malfunction in the signaling system. In light of the malfunction, leading professionals from the largest companies in the world were flown to Israel , this is in order to deal with the last hurdles leading up to the launch. The NTA teams are working night and day in order to provide the public with a finished product of the highest quality, and to open the red line as early as the first quarter of 2023. The costs of the postponement have not yet been calculated."

  • news

  • Political-political

Tags

  • light rail

  • Department of Transportation

  • Marev Michaeli

  • Light Rail

Source: walla

All news articles on 2022-11-30

You may like

Trends 24h

News/Politics 2024-03-27T16:45:54.081Z

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.