To improve one thing, sometimes we have to go through a brief, challenging period. For Jerusalemites, that tough period started this week.
The popular Red Line of the light rail was temporarily suspended on February 9 for service work to prepare for the launch of the line’s extensions. It has sparked Jerusalemites’ frustration at the disruption of their day-to-day transportation routine, as well as excitement for the line’s extensions. The temporary suspension was supposed to have ended by today.
Cfir, the company that operates and maintains what it refers to as “The Light Train” on the Red Line, stated on its website: “This short pause is necessary for system upgrades, the introduction of new train cars, safety inspections, and test runs along the entire existing route and new extensions, both day and night.”
From the municipal side, the security tests being carried out can only be done if the system is temporarily suspended, explained Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Adir Schwarz of the Hitorerut party.
“The professionals explained it as the system thus far is speaking French, and it needs to be taught how to speak in Spanish – because we’re switching to the Spanish system,” Schwarz said. “That new system also has new trains; the trains right now have all been doing about 800,000 km. in the 10 years since the line has been active. They need to be renewed as well.”
Wearing high-visibility vests on a cold, windy, and rainy week, light rail workers guided passersby on where to go in lieu of the suspended service.
Alon, who normally works as a light rail ticket inspector, was stationed at the Mahaneh Yehuda stop on Jaffa Road to assist people with getting to their destinations.
“I tell them what number for the bus, what station, where they want to go,” said the Jerusalem resident helpfully. “I also give them a flyer if somebody wants. I show them the direction they want to go.”
Jerusalemites’ perspectives
Pisgat Ze’ev resident Rachel Moerman, who can normally take the light rail to the city center in about 20 minutes, found that it took more than an hour to make the same trek on a bus this week. However, she is looking forward to the light rail extension in her neighborhood.
“It’s very convenient; it’s fast when I have my groceries and I want to get home with them. I don’t like having to drag my shopping trolley up on the bus; bringing it onto the light rail [is easier] – you just roll there, roll on, roll off,” Moerman said.
A senior resident of Kiryat Menachem who was waiting at a bus stop along Shaare Zedek Street was impacted by the transit disruptions.
“It affects me because the bus doesn’t reach the shuk from here, so older people need to walk,” he said.
One worker at a Jaffa Road bakery voiced a similar opinion, saying the situation was “terrible.”
“Look at all these older people who have to walk; they’re crying about this,” she said, adding that there has been less foot traffic and fewer customers.
To accommodate the disruptions, alternative bus services were offered by the Transportation Ministry. One couple in Jerusalem observed the increased availability of buses.
“We take the bus most of the time anyway, but we take the light rail sometimes because it’s quicker,” explained the couple, who commute from Beit Shemesh. “Today we take the bus; it’s much longer, but it’s good.”
Yair Hakak, who works near City Hall and takes the light rail almost every day, allowed that there could have been more advance notice of the suspension; nevertheless, he said it has been handled well.
“The buses are moving, [there is] just a little more traffic, there’s traffic enforcement out, there’s customer service people out,” he said matter of factly. “It has to be done.”
The Rehavia resident was also in Jerusalem when the Red Line was under construction, more than a decade ago, and finds that the changes to Jaffa Road have been positive.
“I worked on Jaffa Road for 15 years, something like that. This included the entire time the Red Line was being constructed, beginning to end, so I know what a hassle it can be,” Hakak said. But now that the Red Line is well in use, he noted, “the air is cleaner, the buildings are cleaner. Pedestrianizing Jaffa Road has done nothing but good things, I think, for the center of the city.”
Taxi drivers appear to be one group benefiting from the situation.
“I’ve had great business this week,” said one taxi driver cheerfully outside the Central Bus Station. “I don’t know if it’s because of the light rail, but thank God, I had lots of work yesterday and today. Hopefully, lots of work tomorrow and the next day.”
A woman who resides in Katamon and works on Jaffa Road noted the inconvenience but also said, “I take the bus instead. It’s 15 minutes longer, but it’s okay. I like the light rail. It’s very, very good. It’s very crowded, but effective.”
Developing public transportation in Jerusalem
The light rail kicked off operations in December 2011 with the Red Line. Today, it sees around 180,000 daily rides, with Schwarz noting that more people ride on the Red Line than on the entirety of the Israel Railways.
“There is nothing better than public transportation, and a good city should have reliable public transportation. Jerusalem was lacking that,” he said. “This is why we’re building the light rail. I’m sure that when the Green Line and the Blue Line start working, we will see very similar numbers.”
The years of construction will not be easy for the people of Jerusalem, Schwarz conceded, but the changes are needed.
“Putting our trust in the private car is not viable, not responsible when we look at the future of the city,” he said. “We have no other alternative but to promote public transportation of high quality. In Jerusalem, we have 12,000 private cars each year, and the city is not getting bigger.
“These few years are going to be tough; it’s not going to be easy,” he stressed.
Wheels in motion for the future
In south Jerusalem, two routes – along the German Colony’s main artery Emek Refaim Street and the heavily used Hebron Road – are under construction as part of the plan to expand the light rail network.
Baka resident Miriam Gold, who lives close to Mesila Park, has noticed an increase in vehicular traffic.
“They haven’t gotten close enough to me yet to get the noise and the obstruction in terms of walking to stores and stuff like that, but the traffic has gotten really bad,” she said.
“Ultimately, when it’s completed, it’s going to be great,” she added. “But I think that the years that it’s going to take to do it are going to make living in Jerusalem and working here a very big challenge.”
When asked what action could have been taken to make life slightly easier for residents, Gold said it might have helped if the construction on Emek Refaim and Hebron streets were not done simultaneously.
“Maybe doing one and then the other, so that at least people can head up to Derech Hebron to use those buses and those public routes because these are going to get really, really bad,” she said.
Regarding the price of progress, Sarah Ben-Nun, who lives just off of Emek Refaim Street, lamented the example set by the Red Line, which took longer to complete than was initially projected. “I wouldn’t mind if it took a year, but it’s going to take 15 [half jokingly].”
MEANWHILE, ARNONA resident Arnie Draiman, who has lived throughout southern Jerusalem for 40 years, doesn’t hear noise from construction but has seen traffic become chaotic.
“I don’t see it becoming less of a mess anytime in the near future,” he said. “They’ve created bus lanes, taken away bus lanes, they’ve narrowed certain parts of the street – left turn only or right turn only. It’s very difficult to commute along Derech Hebron almost any time of day.”
Draiman, who sits on the South Jerusalem Urban Planning Committee, finds that the powers that be have been very forthcoming with plans, and he often shares information online about the construction and planning of the new lines. But he is not looking forward to the new light rail lines.
“I don’t think the light rail is a good answer for Jerusalem because it means I have to get out of my neighborhood to the light rail, so that’s a bus – I can’t walk, depending on if it’s raining or too hot,” he said. “It’s not just for me, or for single mothers with two or three kids, families with three or four kids, elderly people schlepping packages.
“You have to get from your house to the light rail, then you get on the light rail, you go to a destination, and from there you have to take another bus into the neighborhood where you’re going to visit. ”
Hakak, on the other hand, takes a pragmatic perspective. “If we want infrastructure development and good services, there’s a price to be paid,” he said.
“Frankly, I think the objections to the light rail on Emek Refaim Street and [proposed] alternative of a tunnel are deeply unrealistic. Emek Refaim is in serious trouble as a commercial center, and this will all be for the good. The residents should be clamoring not to have it canceled but rather that the city get itself together and get the construction done fast.”
Har Homa resident Sarah Williams is excited about the new light rail lines to be built but, like many others, she doesn’t like the construction process. Her son, who has vision issues, takes the bus everywhere, and she shared his perspective on the construction along Hebron Road.
“He thinks the tearing up of Derech Hebron is great,” Williams said. “The buses are no longer stopping in the middle of the road; they stop by the sidewalk.
“The impossibility of parking downtown has done exactly what the city wanted – it’s made me get out of my car and take a bus when I go downtown,” she added.
Regarding traffic, delays and lane closures, she said, “They do the best they can; they’ve had teams from the city and police out there trying to direct traffic, but at rush hour it’s just a balagan.”
Williams is looking forward to one day taking the light rail throughout Jerusalem, but she noted it is important to keep a variety of public transportation options open, and raised the question of whether there will continue to be buses that go downtown.
“It will be great once we have the light rail, if I can just catch a shuttle up to the top of the hill, jump on the light rail, and ride all the way into town. It will be fabulous.”
Lessons learned and implemented
Deputy Mayor Schwarz assured the public that the city will work to clarify how the construction of the new lines will be done, and that lessons have been learned from the 10-year extension of the Red Line.
“In the Red Line in the past, it was all done at the same time – the infrastructure and the tracks and the electricity, it was all being done in parallel,” he said. “But there are many things that you can only do gradually, especially when not all of the infrastructure is under the responsibility of the municipality.”
For the new lines, construction is divided into two main stages – Infra 1 and Infra 2 – Schwarz explained.
“In Infra 1, Moriah – an infrastructure company owned by the municipality – goes to the street, to the terrain, and does all the infrastructure from A to Z but has nothing to do with the tracks, with the train,” he said, citing examples such as how the company buries the electricity, phone lines, and water pipes under the ground.
The next step is Infra 2, which is to lay the tracks.
“The second thing that we learned is the way we communicate with businesses along the route, with residents along the route, and understanding that it’s not going to be easy for anyone. We understand that it needs to be much better than it was in the Red Line. When they started the Red Line on Jaffa Road, a lot of the businesses there collapsed.”
“We in Hitorerut [movement], this is very important to us, to help small businesses survive this time of construction,” he added. “We have a whole plan made for that as well.”
When high-quality public transportation is introduced to a city, people will switch to using it, Schwarz affirmed.
“In a functioning city, using public transportation is a means for anyone. This is what we want to see in Jerusalem,” Schwarz added. “We want to see [people] on the light rail, in the bike lanes, people with their best suits on the way to business meetings.
“That’s when we will know that we succeeded.”
Ariela Ohrenstein and Yuval Levy contributed to this article.
The three light rail lines
The Red Line goes from Heil HaAvir (Chayl Avir) to Mount Herzl, with new extensions opening to the Neve Yaakov neighborhood in the north of the city, and Hadassah Ein Kerem Medical Center in the city’s south.
The Blue Line will connect the neighborhoods of Gilo and Talpiot in southern Jerusalem to the Ramot neighborhood in the north. This line, with its 52 stations, will enhance the Red and Green lines. The segments of the Blue Line are planned to gradually operate between 2027-2028 and will be able to serve 250,000 passengers daily.
In September 2023, the JTrain consortium was chosen as the winning bid to build the Blue Line and a new light rail depot in Malha to accommodate 66 new light rail trains. The estimated cost is NIS 9 billion. The line will include a 2-km. underground section from Jaffa Road beneath Geula and Mea She’arim to Sanhedria.
The Green Line network will connect both Hebrew University of Jerusalem campuses, three hospitals, and several neighborhoods, according to the Jerusalem Transportation Master Plan. Along its 41 stations, it will also connect sites including the government precinct, the Tisch Family Biblical Zoo, the Malha Mall, and Teddy Stadium.
All lines carry 500 passengers per train.
Asaf Zagrizak/Globes/TNS, Ofer Petersburg, and Jerusalem Post staff contributed to this report.