Israel’s State Comptroller, on Wednesday, published its report regarding the public transportation crisis in Israel.

In the report, which was 600 pages long, the Comptroller issued a long list of failures in the area of public transportation in Israel that included, the poor state of the roads and public transportation vehicles. “The state of public transportation, which Israeli citizens have to deal with on a daily basis in 2019 is very harsh. The traffic jams that occur each morning and evening are very heavy.”

The report continued: “The elongating of travel times to and from work takes a large bite out of the precious time of other citizens, harms the productivity of the work, leads to wasted potential of local products and causes a loss in the revenue from taxes as a result. It also causes air pollution and noise disturbances.”

The report stated that large cities such as Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa in particular suffer from these issues.

“The declining level of customer service is reflected in the infrequency of busses and trains, the long travel times both on busses and trains that are classified as “fast lines” and are in fact more like suburban lines, the lack of integration between lines and services, and the inaccessibility of stations to large segments of the population.”

The report concluded that: “The current situation prevent public transportation services from being a serious alternative to owning a private car and solidifies the need to own a private car, in spite of the many downsides that the use of car brings with it… This is a systematic failure that stems not only from setbacks that characterize a single trend or project but rather are inherent in many places and repeat themselves over and over again.”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)