Canceling the enforcement of the heavily occupied lane on the coastal road empties the meaning of the special lane and may cause significant delays for passengers on public transportation, according to an investigation conducted by the "Israel Hayom" team.
Transportation Minister Miri Regev decided at the beginning of this month to reduce enforcement on the public transportation route on the coastal road during busy hours, a decision that received a lot of public criticism and claims that the action would nullify the meaning of the route and harm bus traffic on the route.
Upon assuming the position of Minister of Transportation, Regev announced a re-examination of the public transportation routes after claiming that, at least in part, the public transportation routes "stand empty" while passengers wait in traffic jams.
Regev's speech on the subject came under fire in the media and on social networks, and a week later Regev made a U-turn, at least on a rhetorical level, and made it clear that she intends to work to increase bus traffic on public transportation routes, not bring about their cancellation.
Beep on the lane: drive on the public transport lane on the coastal road
Despite the minister's change of tone, she announced on that occasion the cessation of enforcement in the busy lane on the coastal road during rush hours.
A heavily occupied route is a route on which public transport and vehicles with three or more passengers travel and is intended to encourage, in addition to the use of public transport, shared journeys.
Minister Regev justified her decision by saying that the enforcement, which is carried out by the police themselves and not by automatic optical means, delays traffic and causes congestion and risk.
The decision drew severe criticism once again on the claim that the reduction of enforcement during the critical hours, and the announcement of it publicly, is in fact tantamount to canceling the route.
Two weeks after the decision, the "Israel Hayom" team, in cooperation with the "15-Dekot" organization, an organization of public transportation consumers in Israel, went out to check the situation on the public transportation route and documented a large amount of private vehicles, which are used by only one passenger, including trucks in the lane
In a short video filmed on the lane, dozens of significant offenses arise within a few minutes.
This is an amount that in busy sections can cause a traffic jam in the public transport route and nullify the meaning of the route, which is designed to allow fast movement for passengers by bus and car sharing.
In order to understand the importance of Route 2 as a public transportation artery for Gush Dan, it is enough to look at the data.
A brief check conducted by the "15 Minutes" organization shows that on an average weekday at the Gilolit intersection, a critical section of the route, about 2,000 cars drive south. A rough calculation of the average occupancy of private vehicles shows that there are about 2,400 private vehicle passengers per day in the section.
On the other hand, from the public transport data, about 4,000 passengers travel on the same section by public transport towards the south during rush hours, a figure almost double that occupies, in terms of the occupancy of the road section, a much smaller area.
Minister of Transportation Miri Regev, photo: Oren Ben Hakon
Canceling the special lane by stopping enforcement will mean that almost two-thirds of road users will also have to face the traffic jam and the significant incentive to use public transportation will disappear, precisely at a key point in Gush Dan.
The passengers, mostly workers who travel from the outskirts to work in Gush Dan, are the ones who will be affected by the move, and not residents of Gush Dan who travel by city buses.
Besides the unimaginable cost of the traffic jams to the Israeli economy, the paving of hundreds of thousands of citizens for daily use of a private vehicle hurts the pocket of the Israeli citizen, precisely in a time of rising prices and fear of an economic crisis.
The 15 Minutes organization stated: "The NTAs have a huge importance in improving public transportation."
It is a relatively cheap and simple tool that does not require a new infrastructure, but its contribution is enormous.
When you want a bus to arrive on time, you first need a traffic light so that the bus doesn't get stuck in traffic with all the private vehicles.
If there are no traffic jams, public transportation will inevitably suffer a fatal injury, this will encourage more people to switch to private cars, which will only increase the traffic jams in the end - and those who will be harmed are the general public, and especially residents from the outskirts who come to their place of work in the Gush Dan area.
The drivers will also be harmed, because a bus that gets stuck in traffic, its travel time will be longer, which means a violation of breaks for the drivers, and of course more difficult working conditions.
The organization also added: "A working bus station is an empty bus station, because the goal is to skip the traffic, which will be an incentive for the public to move to the bus station. Of course, one should always strive to increase the frequency, and for this we need to recruit more drivers, what will bring them is not cancellation It's not the workers who will be harmed by their conditions, but the improvement of working conditions and raising their status. The current documentation shows how necessary enforcement is. We call on the minister to order the resumption of enforcement during rush hours as soon as possible and to strengthen the police force. We must not lend a hand to lawbreakers who harm public transportation."
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