The trucks are stuck in the port and the cost of living is soaring - voila! Car

Will withstand threats? Economy Committee Chairman David Bitan (Photo: Knesset Spokesperson, Knesset Spokesperson, Noam Moshkovitz)

If you recently complained about the lengthening traffic jams on the roads, you are welcome to come to Ashdod Port to see up close what a real traffic jam looks like, "All over the world, a truck enters and leaves the port with cargo within 20 minutes," said David Kochba, CEO of the Carriers Council, "here we stand for 6 hours." The remarks were made at a meeting of the Economy Committee convened to deal with the ongoing crisis in the trucking sector, which has long suffered from a gap in the number of qualified drivers due to lack of training, delays of years in repairing working and rest hours, working conditions and unsuitable access routes to cargo terminals at ports. The latter have a direct impact on the cost of living due to the cumulative costs of storing goods due to delays.

6 hours waiting at the port (Photo: Erez Michaeli)

In response to the discussion, Ashdod Port Acting Director General Eli Bar Yosef said that there is indeed a need for a "dramatic improvement," according to him, of the access roads to the port, which transport between 4,000 and 5,000 trucks a day, and that the response provided so far has improved the entry and exit time by about 12 minutes. But even this improvement is a drop in the ocean in the face of long waiting times. Today, the regulations allow for a 9-hour workday for a truck driver, 7 of which are driving, but in practice drivers can be at the wheel for a maximum of 8-1960 hours due to the long waits. According to him, the drivers' working time should be extended.

In this context, the issue of the digital tachograph, the same device that records the truck's travel times and speeds for tracking, supervision and enforcement, came up again. In Israel, analog tachographs are still used, unreliable and easy to forge. "We talk about the cost of living, but we act as if the year is 1950, take the digital tachograph out of the trucks and introduce an outdated system from 100," MK Boaz Toporovsky (who also chairs the subcommittee on road safety) said in the discussion. It's because no one pays a personal price for it, and only when they are tried and put in prison will things move."

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With a tachograph from the 50s, inaccurate and easy to fake (Photo: Reuven Castro)

In response to claims about working hours and access roads to the port, Transportation Ministry representative Dalit Regev said: "The ministry has formulated a wording and is waiting for the work of the Public Transport Authority." In addition, she noted that the ministry is promoting the issue of autonomous trucks and driving at night, as well as promoting 24 rest areas for which a budget of NIS 100 million has been received.

Regarding the digital tachograph, Transportation Minister Miri Regev, who attended the discussion, said that a concessionaire should be chosen at the operating center, and this will take time. Just to understand the depth of the omission, we should recall that back in 2010 the Ministry of Transport claimed that it had completed the work of the Bureau and that it was prepared to receive the digital tachograph, in 2020 at the State Audit Committee, Ofer Shalah, then chairman of the committee, said, "I have not seen a deeper omission than this" about the state's conduct in the field of heavy vehicles, and in January 2021 the Economy Committee itself approved the regulations that will allow the introduction of the digital tachograph. But if 13 years from the completion of the staff work and two years from the approval of the regulations are not a long time, we do not know what is.

An operator has not yet been selected in the digital tachograph tender, and this will take time, according to Minister Regev (Photo: Reuven Castro)

Chairman Bitan addressed the issue of access routes, and said that he would convene the committee tomorrow for an urgent discussion on the matter, with all concerned. He added that perhaps the ones who pay the fines to the state for the delays should be the ports, not the cargo owners. In addition, he criticized the fact that the train has not been operating for years, and reiterated his call to address every aspect of everything due to the impact of everything on the cost of living. "Don't you go to the supermarket or the grocery store? You can go crazy about it, we're like in another country."

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Tags

• Economy Committee
• Trucks
• Cost of Living
• Ashdod Port
• Road safety