The commute to/from Jerusalem

In the future, we can assume that people commuting to the capital from the central district will account for most of the passengers arriving on the new rail line.

By YAIR ASSAF-SHAPIRA
Volume of traffic on roads 1 and 443, by direction of travel and hour of the day (photo credit: JERUSALEM INSTITUTE FOR ISRAEL STUDIES)
Volume of traffic on roads 1 and 443, by direction of travel and hour of the day
(photo credit: JERUSALEM INSTITUTE FOR ISRAEL STUDIES)
In the future, the commuting time between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv will be shorter than it is today. Will this have an effect on residential choices? Will more people opt to live in Tel Aviv and work in Jerusalem, or maybe vice versa?
When planning for the future, it’s usually a good idea to start with the present and look at the current trends.
According to the Workforce Survey of the Central Bureau of Statistics, in 2013, Jerusalem was the place of employment for about 293,000 people, the majority of whom (224,700) resided there. A little more than 48,000 of the 68,600 workers from outside the city resided nearby, whether in the Jerusalem corridor or Judea and Samaria. Meanwhile, 16,600 resided in the central district, including Tel Aviv and its environs, while the rest commuted from the South, Haifa or the North.
In the future, we can assume that people commuting to the capital from the central district will account for most of the passengers arriving on the new rail line. But what about travel in the opposite direction? Will the morning trains leaving Jerusalem be full? Will they carry more passengers than those arriving from Tel Aviv? According to recent statistics, the number of people residing in Jerusalem who commute to jobs outside the city stands at about 34,000, or about half the number of those commuting into the city.
Of this group, 10,300 work in the central district (2,900 of them in Tel Aviv proper). If the new rail line were to open today, the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem train would be the busier one.
Car counts from roads connecting Jerusalem to the central district reveal a somewhat similar trend.
From 6 to 10 a.m., some 9,300 cars enter Jerusalem via Route 1.
(The measuring point is between Sha’ar Hagai and Shoresh; the data reflect averages for the years 2012-13.) About 6,600 cars enter the capital from Route 443. (The measuring point is between Modi’in and Givat Ze’ev; the data are for 2015.) Measuring these together, there are approximately 15,900 cars heading from the central district toward Jerusalem during these four morning hours. During the same hours, some 13,300 cars travel in the opposite direction on the same road segments. The reverse occurs in the afternoon as commuters return home between 2 and 6 p.m.
It appears that there is a substantial road-travel demand in both directions. We can assume that this trend will prevail and that the commute from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem will remain stronger when the commuting time becomes shorter thanks to both the new rail line and the improved Route 1, although the number of commuters in both directions will likely grow substantially.