In the early 1970's the then Transport Minister Shimon Peres tackled the problem of draining away water from Tel Aviv's Ayalon River. He consulted a US highways engineer who recommended building a three kilometer underground channel from the point where the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway (Road 1) meets the Ayalon Highway (Road 20) to the Jaffa seafront. 40 years later and Peres is still with us but the solution offered by the US engineer has not been fully examined.
The plan, which would cost NIS 500 million, would not only dispose of 50% of the Ayalon's water during heavy rainfall and prevent flooding, it would also boost Israel Railways. It would allow a fourth track to be laid through Tel Aviv without which Israel Railways will be unable to develop and expand.
At the moment, all the country's railway lines pass through the three-track bottleneck along Tel Aviv's Ayalon River. There is no transport project in Israel that is more important than this and the government knows that. But the decision has still not been taken. Planning work is far from complete. There are endless discussions, proposals and alternatives. If officials are allowed to continue treading water nothing would have changed by the next flood. Somebody has to wake up and take responsibility and that somebody can only be the Prime Minister of Transport Minister. The Transport Minister is proud, and is right to be, about the many projects pushed forward during his period in the job but the problem is that Yisrael Katz is a one term of office bulldozer. He is not interested in complex long-term projects where the ribbon will only be cut after two more elections.
For his part Netanyahu is sunk in dangerous fantasies about fast trains to Eilat and Kiryat Shmona as if the transport problems of Greater Tel Aviv have already been solved. Netanyahu and Katz are only interested in talking about one thing: bringing the periphery closer to the center. To build railways and highways to the periphery is easy and simple, photographs well and promises political profit. But it defies economic logic and spits in the face of those who live in the center of the country. The state is wasting money on residents of Beit Shean who will ride the superfluous Jezreel Valley railway while 3.5 million residents in Greater Tel Aviv won't even have their first Light Rail line until 2020. What has Netanyahu's government done for Greater Tel Aviv residents except for a failed public transport routes reform.
Netanyahu and Katz are currently pushing with all their might for a fast rail link to Eilat that will cost tax payers NIS 30 billion. For that price Tel Aviv could have three subway lines. Netanyahu is demanding that the train to Eilat will take two hours from Tel Aviv and not the two and a half hours that the plan proposes. He said, "It will costs whatever it costs. " Ironically passengers to Eilat will lose all the time they save on the train, waiting on the station platform because nobody bothered to build a fourth track along the Ayalon.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on January 8, 2013
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2013