Danger signs?

The Jerusalem light rail is officially up and running, but one traffic safety organization is cautioning that it’s likely to be a bumpy ride until all the safety hazards are ironed out.

By SETH J. FRANTZMAN
danger signs light rail_521 (photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
danger signs light rail_521
(photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
‘You can have extra signage, ‘Be careful, many trains expected’ with something flashing. There could be booths giving out leaflets, or people handing them out, basic safety messages,” says David Rapport, a member of Metuna, an organization devoted to road safety and injury prevention. He has agreed to give a tour of some of the dangerous aspects of the Jerusalem light rail, days ahead of its official launch Friday.
Born and raised in the UK, Rapport came to Israel 25 years ago and has the manners of someone concerned about safety – a fastidious style and attention to details.
He is also a volunteer traffic policeman, which puts him on edge when he sees car and motorcycle drivers violating the law.
Metuna has been fighting for years to increase road safety.
Founded in 1993, it has fought for restricting speed limits and adding speed bumps, and has been involved in other road safety campaigns. The city has listened to Metuna’s concerns regarding the light rail but has not acted on many of its recommendations that it laid out in a recent position paper. Rapport recalls a very limited discussion during which “we raised a number of concerns, and they mentioned a number of steps that were taken.”
“You see here a car has stopped on the tracks,” he says. At the busy junction called Tzahal Square, the tracks cross a three-way intersection, and Rapport has noticed a car that has strayed onto the tracks and parked there. It is a complicated intersection because traffic that comes down Route 1 is funneled into one lane that makes up Shlomo Hamelech Street. A city hall building is on one side, a large Armenian-owned building is on another corner, part of the French complex of Notre Dame is on a third corner, and the Old City walls are on a fourth corner.
Coordinating the light rail with the traffic lights here must have been a nightmare and the traffic problems prove it, as the train waits and waits for a “go” signal.
Luckily, the car that was stopped on the tracks has gone by then.
Rapport sees the good and the bad. “First of all, there is nothing here to stop a car from straying onto the tracks except a few stripes on the pavement. There are three types of signs that are arranged for drivers and pedestrians to know that there is a train. Now I’ve worked out what they mean, but for the average person it isn’t clear. I haven’t seen any literature telling me what the signs mean. And what about the majority of people who have been driving for years? Ideally, the city could distribute explanations of the new signs through the mail or with our water bills,” he says.
One of the major problems that Rapport points out is the lack of any indicator showing pedestrians how far back they should stand on the tracks. On Jaffa Road between the Coffee Bean cafe and Zion Square there is a series of cafes, but there is no clear signage indicating where they may place their chairs and where pedestrians are safe to stand when a train passes. Rapport explains, “You can see the train is coming along and people don’t pay much attention… There could be a line showing up to what point pedestrians may stand when a train passes and another line showing the cafes up to where they can place their chairs.”
It is also a problem of brightness. The city has chosen a series of dull colors to indicate where the tracks are, and from Metuna’s perspective it should have gone with bright red or some other bold color that would indicate clearly to people that there are railway tracks.
For instance, at the entrance to Jaffa Road Rapport shows where the sidewalk narrows to a point that if there were a crowd of pedestrians, they would end up on the tracks.
“There could be something as basic as a red line, or they could raise the tracks to help pedestrians understand that there is a danger here. They could even extend the metal fences [that are mostly only at the train stops] to keep pedestrians on the right side away from the tracks, especially at the end of Jaffa Road.”
Another dangerous element, according to Rapport, is the easy access that cars have to the tracks opposite the Coffee Bean and at Zion Square. During the course of our tour of the area we saw two deliverymen on motorcycles riding on the tracks. There are a number of cars parked in Zion Square. “There is nothing preventing cars from straying onto the tracks; the same problem exists at Zion Square… People will learn that there are exceptions [to the no-car rule] and they may stray onto the tracks in any case,” he says.
A related problem is the tendency of cars to jam up intersections. Rapport points out how the intersection at Jaffa Road has been improved recently by the city.
“In the past, cars would congregate on the tracks because this goes from two lanes to one narrow lane, and that means people would be stuck on the tracks. By bringing the stopping line and crosswalk farther up, they have brought the cars closer to the tracks so they are less tempted to go onto the track. The danger still is that cars will congregate here,” he explains.
One remedy for many of these problems would be the enforcement of certain rules. Rapport argues for strict enforcement to keep cars from blocking the tracks. He is also in favor of giving tickets to pedestrians who cross in front of oncoming trains. “People are aware that it is dangerous to cross the tracks, but there is no enforcement.
It would be better to give fines to people crossing when they shouldn’t,” he says.
Mordechai Feder, the chairman of Metuna, says that sound is also an issue. “The train is very quiet. There should be a constant, automatic bell that warns people that the train is approaching, especially for pedestrians who are blind, visually impaired or those who are looking the other way.”
While there have been few accidents involving the light rail since it began tests more than six months ago, Feder argues that “We are happy that no one has been struck by the change, but you can’t rely on miracles. We have many stories from municipal workers about people who almost got hit.”
The Jerusalem Transit Master Plan (JTMP), whose members have worked closely with the Transportation Ministry, Jerusalem City Hall and CityPass (the company that runs the light rail), has been involved with looking into safety issues of the light rail from the beginning. JTMP spokesman Shmuel Elgrabli explains that, in terms of law enforcement, the police will soon hand out NIS 1,500 fines to those who cross on a red light at the train tracks.
Amnon Erian, who sat on the city council’s safety committee in discussions regarding the light rail and is also working at the JTMP, says that many of the safety issues have been addressed. “We made 135 presentations to 3,500 handicapped people to explain the light rail to them. We also implemented a NIS 7 million program to go around to all the schools and take the children out to see the light rail and teach them about it. We advertised on the radio and in the newspaper. We also presented a program for elderly people.”
In addition, the various organizations involved with the tram system put distributed a flyer called “The light rail is coming to Jaffa Road,” which detailed numerous safety concerns, including instructing pedestrians to cross at sidewalks and warning cars not to stop on the tracks at intersections.
In terms of some of the specific issues raised by Rapport, Erian says that the cars parked at Zion Square probably belong to people working on construction there. “Probably there was a sign there about the train to keep traffic off the cars.” It seems to have been removed.
He argues that the entrance to Jaffa Road is not a danger to pedestrians.
“They can walk anywhere [i.e., there is no dangerous bottleneck],” he explains.
As regards the coffee shops and their chairs that encroach upon the tracks along Jaffa Road, “There is a plan to get the coffee shops to move their chairs back, sort of like on Ibn Gvirol Street in Tel Aviv where the city inserted studs in the pavement to show that they could not go beyond a certain point and encroach on the bicycle path.”
As for a white line that seems to indicate that cars can drive down the railway track on Jaffa Road, “that is for trucks to make deliveries at night when the train isn’t running,” he says.
Feder, Rapport and the rest of the Metuna members are not optimistic. The two believe that serious injury or death might result from a lack of attention to safety. Feder concludes, “You will see that all the safety issues have been neglected from a practical point of view.”