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According to early Lag B’Omer AM reports from Meron, the transportation collapsed, leaving thousands and thousands of people stranded.
Travelers report the shuttle service that was supposed to be operational simply “vanished” for a number of hours as people stood around without an idea what is going on.
Men, women and children are stranded in many places and unable to return home from Meron as buses are not available and many passengers explain “there is simply no one responsible to speak with”.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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4 Responses
Yup, I was there from 2:50am till 6:05 waiting for the buses… And instead of the police making progress with the buses, they treated everyone like by a riot! They brought horses and galloped in the crowds almost trampling us while the little children were screaming out of fear, they (purposely) got girl soldiers to brace arms and make a chane to push back crowds violently, they were screaming and hitting bochurim and avreichim as well as arresting one!! It was really disgusting how they treated us, and made kids, parents and the ederly wait a few hours for a bus ride! I overheard a Mizrachi lady with a baby asking a girl solider what is the problem that theybneed to treat us this way, and her answer was “ha’datiim hem haba’aya!” – the religious are the problem! I think this was horrible and the police/yasa”m should be ashamed of themselves!
A country the size of EY simply lacks the logistics to move hundreds of thousands of people from the cities to a relatively remote area with limited road capacity for one day a year. It makes no sense to invest millions of NIS to upgrade facilities for one day a year. There aren’t enough charter buses and Eged still has to maintain basic service for other areas of the country. If reliable transportation is so important to you than rent a car, charter a bus with your chavrusah, or leave a day or two early and depart a day or two later. Otherwise, stay home and participate in any of the local bonfires and celebrations.
They wont fix this until they ban private vehicles and have ONLY buses all the way up from Elifelet. Last year was bad, the year before not as bad. People need to start to learn, to not go on Lag BeOmer. You should have seen this coming too, since it fell in the middle of the week. I drive for a tour company, and last year didnt take anyone there, this year thankfully also didnt take anyone. This after having taken people there for 3 or 4 years in a row. Now so one thing from pat years people need to understand, is that if 10 thousand arrive to Meiron over the space of 10 hours say, they will never be able to all leave in the same 2 or 3 hour period. This is the main issue as well as all the private cars blocking the way up. Each time I have taken people, even when two years ago the”closed” the road from Elifelet to Meiron, as soon as I got near to Tsomet Ein Zeitim everything falls apart, as it is jammed with private cars that must slip in from Tsefat or something.
In the future, if you decide to go on Lag BeOmer to Meiron, take food and drink to keep on you, for your hours long wait to leave. Many of the bus drivers, that have taken you up there, are on sleep breaks a half kilometer from where you wait, sleep breaks mandated by law for safety and quality of life of drivers.
Nothing seems to have changed since I was in Meron in 2001. I took a bus from Haifa to Meron at 9PM, Thursday night. The bus was meant to leave back to Haifa at 2AM. However, due to the roads being jammed, our bus couldn’t get off the mountain. So we were stuck in Meron on the bus until 6AM. Didn’t get back to Haifa until 8AM.
YOU WERE WARNED.