The Ministry of Transportation announced today (Thursday) that next Thursday a new section of Netiv Plus in Ayalon North, on the route between Holon Junction and the Peace Interchange, will be opened for public transportation passengers and passengers in private vehicles with 3 or more passengers.
According to the announcement, the new route is added to the existing routes, and creates continuous preference for public transportation on one of the busiest roads in the country, from the Ayalon entrance to the Peace Interchange. The new section, which is 4.5 km long, will be added to the existing section, thus completing 15 consecutive km of transportation preference cooperativeto the intercity public transportation lines to Tel Aviv, and to the free shuttles of the Nativ car park in Shafirim.
“The Million Plan”: 120 km of preference, but which one?
The route will open more than two years ahead of schedule as part of the completion of the expressway project of the Ministry of Transportation and the Ayalon Routes Company, and joins the public transportation route in Ayalon South that opened last month, from the Shalom interchange to the Wolfson interchange, which connects to the split between Route 20 and Route 1. The expressway is a project that will be completed in 2025 and will include Huge parking lots in Shafiim and Rishon Lezion, and between them a lane was added to the Ayalon lanes for the use of shuttles, public transportation and vehicles that will pay a toll, with a commitment that the travel on the lane will be at a speed of 70 km/h.
The Ministry of Transportation mentions that according to the “Million Plan” which aims to ease congestion on the roads and was unanimously approved by the government about two months ago, the Ministry of Transportation will allocate preferential routes 120 kilometers long in the coming year. However, according to the same government decision, the addition is supposed to be “on the basis of existing road infrastructure” and include highways, so it is difficult to find justification for including this project, which includes the addition of a lane, where private vehicles are also allowed to travel, to the same government program.
Inadequate enforcement
The main problem with the project is enforcement, as there is still no technology capable of counting the number of passengers in a vehicle and enforcement is assigned with controversial success to the biker unit of the traffic police. In the past, the government ministries claimed that the enforcement was insufficient, and the report of the Knesset’s Research and Information Center also pointed to a dip over the years in police enforcement on preferential routes. Despite this, projects like Nativ Plus continue and after the holidays such a path will be painted, as first published in Globes, from the Daniel Interchange to the entrance to Jerusalem. As part of that government decision, it was decided to add 8 standards to the motorcycle unit of the police, which so far has not demonstrated impressive performance in this regard.
The Minister of Transportation and Road Safety MK Merav Michaeli said that “after years of neglect, public and cooperative transportation in Israel is progressing. The best way to bypass traffic jams and save travel time is to use public and cooperative transportation, which is why we are making room for it on new preferential routes throughout the country.”
The director general of the Ministry of Transportation and Road Safety, Michal Frank, said that “extending the Nativ Plus route to the Peace Interchange will make traveling by public and shared transportation even more attractive, and will save traffic at the entrance to Tel Aviv. We, along with our partners in Netivy Elon, are investing efforts to advance the timetables for the fast lanes project. We instructed to open any new preference section that is ready for the benefit of female passengers and public transportation passengers, even before the completion of the project.”
The CEO of the Ayalon Routes Company, Orly Stern, added that “the new route that opened in Ayalon North is a significant milestone in the “Fast Routes” project, which will change within a few years from end to end the travel experience of tens of thousands of Israelis who travel along the route every day. Thanks to the hard work of the women and professionals who work around the clock on the busy route in Israel, we are opening another significant segment which is good news for the passengers of public and shared transportation.”