New index to monitor transport changes

Source: Globes, Tel Aviv, IsraelAug.迷你倉出租 27--Traffic congestion in Israel is more than two-and-a-half times the OECD average. Furthermore, congestion, which is worsening worldwide because of population growth and other factors, is rising in Israel extremely fast. In the past two decades, congestion rose by 70 percent in Israel, despite the extensive construction of roads and interchanges.To grasp the full significance of this figure, a comparison is warranted: Denmark, which has the fastest growing traffic congestion in Europe, saw an increase of 35 percent in the past 20 years, half the rate in Israel. Traffic congestion rose by 32 percent in Switzerland and 25 percent in Belgium, and by just 7 percent in the Netherlands.Israel currently has 126 vehicles per kilometer of road, compared with an OECD average of 48. Even more worrying, the number of cars per capita in Israel is also rising -- it has increased by 50 percent in the past 20 years. According to the latest data, Israel has one car for every three people.Other transportation data are also discouraging. Although the pace of public spending on other means of transportation, such as trains, bicycles, and buses, has picked up in recent years, it is far from catching up with the budgets in countries that Israel seeks to emulate. Israel's car leasing culture, which encourages employers to give employees company cars that are cheap to operate, and country's national planning strategy of dispersing the population with the objective of establishing demographic facts ("Settle the Negev" and "Judaize the Galilee"), which requires a car for every working person, do not help. Leasing and population dispersal herald a bleak future: traffic jams, pollution, noise, infrastructure waste, the loss of open spaces, and a dangerous, very dangerous, widening of social gaps, because of the lengthening distance from cheap housing in the periphery to jobs with fair pay in centers of business. In the devel迷你倉ped world, traffic accidents are the number one killer of children under the age of 18.A private car is a necessary means of transport in Israel; at least, this is how many people see it. The alternatives -- public transport (trains, buses, taxis, shuttles, and car-sharing), muscle power (bicycles and feet) -- suffer from a low image. The alternatives to cars are also affected by the inability to use some of them on Saturdays and holidays, and the lack of infrastructures to make them attractive and popular (such as designated bus lanes, which would make them faster).There are also encouraging facts however: municipalities which offer bicycle lanes (such as Herzliya, Hod Hasharon, Ra'anana, and Rishon LeZion), and bicycle rentals (only in Tel Aviv so far); the Jerusalem light rail, which two years ago freed the city center from burdensome motor traffic; the Metronit bus rapid transit (BRT) network in Haifa and its suburbs, which began operating in August; the strong growth in railway passenger use in the past years; and the fast lane to Tel Aviv, which alleviates traffic movement into the city from the east, along with its shuttle service to bring people into the city without their cars.Technology also helps find a way out of the private transportation maze. There is the taxi hailing app GetTaxi, and Waze, data from which "Globes" uses to monitor travel times on the roads and to slightly improve driving conditions on them.Starting in August, every month, "Globes" will publish the Israel Traffic Index. The index will present a broad picture of the means of transport people use, and the changes in the proportion of users of each method. Follow it; big things are happening in transportation in Israel, and this index will help you keep abreast of them.Copyright: ___ (c)2013 the Globes (Tel Aviv, Israel) Visit the Globes (Tel Aviv, Israel) at .globes.co.il/serveen/globes/nodeview.asp?fid=942 Distributed by MCT Information Services儲存倉