Railway 431 Bridge over Highway 1 whose work has been stuck for five months/Odi Etzion
Everything was already ready: the contractors showed up for work, paid policemen showed up to block traffic for a day on road number 1 at the Inaba interchange near Modi'in.
The blocking equipment waited on the side.
In the morning, the police and Israel Routes Company announced a hermetic blockade of the Inba Interchange from Friday at 5:30 p.m. until Saturday at 4:30 p.m., with maps and explanations.
The reason: progress towards the completion of the 431 railway bridge from Shefala to Jerusalem, which has been standing unfinished for months over the main road, since the connection work between its two parts was canceled at the last minute in August by order of the Minister of Transportation Miri Regev, due to the fury of ultra-Orthodox MKs over the work being carried out on Shabbat. Because it is a road Central, the officials of the profession clarified, it is impossible to carry out the works in the middle of the week, because blocking it then would lead
to huge traffic jams. But the need to carry out the works, when tens of thousands of cars and buses pass under the parts of the unfinished bridge every day, only became more urgent. No one in the system Want Gesher Shafiim 2.
The Ministry of Transportation tried to prevent the pressure from the ultra-Orthodox. The works were scheduled for the day when the Deputy Minister of Transportation Uri Makalev (Torah Judaism) sat shava on his father, and they announced them at the very last minute.
But the pressures began immediately. You could see it in the panicked announcement that she released Israel Railways in the afternoon: "In the last few hours, there has been a lively conversation regarding work on Saturday on road number 1 in the track 431 project. The work has received the approvals from all the relevant parties while maintaining the status quo.
The works are in the scope of supervising the soul and saving human lives."
Miri Regev tonight on "Meet the Press".
No work was planned at all, just a survey.
Maybe they went to ask the bridge how to get out of the plotter/screenshot, screenshot
And wonder of wonders, at 17:30 traffic continued on the road as usual.
The contractors and police were sent home, without explanation.
Only this evening the train was sent to announce: "The life-saving safety works that were planned to take place in the connecting section of Railroad 431 took place as planned." Suddenly the police forces arrived on the scene not to block the road, but "for the benefit of closing the road if necessary."
It turned out that the police and Israel Routes issued a notice about blocking the interchange, because it was all survey work.
Perhaps Shlomo Filber and Meno Geva came to ask Gesher's opinion on how to get out of the Plonter.
"The teams conducted an engineering survey in order to remove the safety hazard and carried out work to strengthen the connections of the balanced casting system and return it to its previous condition. The purpose of the survey and strengthening work that was carried out was to prevent safety hazards from road users traveling under the bridge that is under construction. In order to carry out the survey and strengthening that was carried out on Friday evening, it was not finally required The closure of the road," announced the railway announcement.
Regev claimed this evening in an appearance on the "Meet the Press" program that there were no political pressures and that everything was carried out as planned.
But the police and the contractors did not receive such a notification: they received an explicit notification yesterday about the cancellation of the planned works.
Regev also announced: the work on the bridge will be done in the middle of the week
.
The event was summed up today by the chairman of Israel Beitenu, MK Avigdor Lieberman, who previously served as the Minister of Transportation.
Our reporter Tal Shalu reported that Lieberman said that "the train works on Shabbat were defined by the professional authorities as soul control and saving human lives. Canceling them for the second time is tantamount to risking human lives, harming the economy and religious coercion."
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Simulation of the new Harling Bridge.
These urgent works will be done, Bridge 431 will continue to wait/Image: Gadish Group
But it is doubtful whether Lieberman was aware of another event that took place on Friday.
At the same time as the cancellation of the works on road number 1, a central railway was closed in Israel for two whole months to allow the completion of another bridge, which connects a new neighborhood to the city of Bnei Brak.
This is about the shutdown of the Sharon Railway, and the disconnection of tens of thousands of residents in Petah Tikva, Rosh Ha'Ein, Kfar Saba and Ra'anana, and workers in the area, such as in the employment center in Afek Park in Rosh Ha'Ein, from their daily means of transportation.
Officially, the shutdown was intended to allow the connection of the track to the important eastern track, from Hadera to Lod, which bypasses Gush Dan from the east.
But work connecting a track that should open in 2027 to a very active track can be done in a much shorter downtime.
What does require a long shutdown is the construction of the Harling Bridge that will connect HaLahi Street in Bnei Brak and Derech Am Moshavot to the new Ayelet Hashar' neighborhood in the city. More than 800 families who purchased apartments in the neighborhoods have paid and have been waiting for months for occupancy, which is being delayed due to the non-completion of the bridge, which was supposed to to be ready originally in 2021 and then in 2023. The parts surrounding the track are already ready, but the central section, a bridge 294 meters long and 50 meters wide, cannot be built over an active track. A project worth NIS 1.1 billion that has been delayed due to the question of closing the track, which already was closed for long months two years ago due to the discovery of cracks in some of the stations on the line, and urgent work to repair them.
Miri Regev had no problem approving this closure, at the price of sending all train passengers to special shuttles in traffic jams for 8 weeks. But a professional solution for Bridge 431, this is not.
Worth noting that in 2020, when the 431 railroad was launched, at a cost of 3.5 billion shekels, the date of its operation was 2026. Now it is 2028. Out of the four years in which a delay of two years accrued, Miri Regev was Minister of Transportation for a total of two years, for two terms
. Regev will really approve the closing of highway number 1 in the middle of the week that will cut off Jerusalem from the rest of the country for a day?
How much longer will the completion of the Rishon Lezion-Modiin railway be delayed?
Stay with us to track the traffic jams.
More on the same topic:
Miri Regev
Israel Railways