Taken for a ride?

Commuters remain skeptical about the much-vaunted benefits of light rail travel, as Jerusalem’s new transit system is still beset by problems,

By SETH J. FRANTZMAN
Jerusalem light rail 311 (photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
Jerusalem light rail 311
(photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
‘There is some problem; we will temporarily turn off the train. This is the driver.” The message crackled over the loudspeaker system on Jerusalem’s newly inaugurated light rail as the train waited at a stop at Ammunition Hill. There was a collective sigh of dismay from the passengers. Then the air conditioning stopped, the doors closed and the hum of the motor went dead. The heat began to rise, and suddenly the absence of windows to open and the lack of little hammers to break through the windows to escape in an emergency seemed more relevant.
“I’m not sure this train is really better than the bus,” one woman muttered. Her friend agreed: “I heard it actually takes longer to get to the center.”
An Orthodox child who had boarded with his family just minutes before began screaming, and two Arab boys who had gotten on in Shuafat began playing tag around a pole in the center of the passenger car. And then the electricity came back on, the air conditioning blessedly blew once again, and the metal beast surged forward down Route 1.
The Jerusalem light rail kicked off to an exciting start on the morning of August 19. At 10:47 a.m. one of the trains left Safra Square opposite the municipality in the direction of Mount Herzl. It was already crowded with people who were taking advantage of the free rides that CityPass was offering to travelers during the first two weeks of operation. The air conditioning system immediately seemed insufficient for the crowd, and the lack of pull-down shades for the windows in the glaring sun also seemed like a problem.
The loudspeaker announced the stops in a clear English voice, and for the three stops in the Arab communities of Shuafat and Beit Hanina the Arabic announcements were intoned well. Oddly, the Hebrew versions always came across as a crackle, as if the announcer had marbles in his mouth when he made the tape.
The train rode smoothly, without the jerkiness that commuters are used to on the buses. It isn’t entirely clear how the CityPass Rav-Kav card will work once people have to pay to use it. A device next to each door seems to promise the passengers will be able to wave their prepaid card in front of the machine and it will deduct a payment. There may be a method to stamp a single ticket, but how will regulators check the people with prepaid cards to see if they actually paid? A large man named Shaul A is greeted by a fellow passenger wearing a military hat. “I was in that course, the one that your hat is from.” It turns out the two men completed the same combat officers’ course about 20 years apart and recall the instructor who has been teaching IDF officers for some 50 years. “This train is grand. I’m riding it just to see, to take the tour up to Mount Herzl and back,” Shaul explains.
He’s not the only one. Joel Hochberg has come from Tel Aviv to meet a friend and ride the rails. “You can say I came all the way from Sydney, Australia, for this. I’ve been studying at Ulpan Gordon in Tel Aviv for the past three months, and I wanted to see the train I heard so much about in the media.”
Hochberg and Shaul both think the light rail could be an excellent thing for tourists. “The double-decker bus the city bought years ago has been a failure and is expensive, but this is a terrific way to see the city,” says Shaul.
As the train passes Yad Sarah, he explains to Joel, “That is Yad Sarah, the famous charity that helps the elderly that was established by the previous mayor.”
Hochberg is concerned about safety and what effect it will have on the buses. “People will need to learn to beware of the train. I came here just to explore the line, but I assume that for the buses it will really affect their bottom line.”
Another passenger wonders why they don’t allow traffic on Jaffa Road. “Can’t you see there is room there for cars? I don’t understand why only the train can use it.”
THE TRAIN pulls into Mount Herzl, the final station, at 11:15. It then disappears, and another train is waiting to let passengers on. A large number of Orthodox children with their parents have come down to ride the train. The children are excited, and they wait with bated breath for the carriages to arrive and then leap to press the button to open the doors.
Dov Rubinstein and his friend N. Epstein have come to see the train. Rubinstein has three bright-eyed children who treat the train like it is the latest amusement park ride, the greatest thing they have seen in a while. “The kids absolutely love it. I think it is a great idea, but there are questions left unanswered. For instance, will the shuttles that the city plans to use in the neighborhoods to connect people to the various stations actually work? People come home from the shuk with big bags of groceries – how will they get them on the shuttle?” he queries.
The train eases its way down Mount Herzl and stops at a traffic light. It now becomes obvious that the light rail does not have priority at many of the lights. This isn’t the only thing that makes it dawdle along. The operators have chosen to let it sit at the stations for two minutes or more to let people embark. This means that the actual time to ride the train from one end to the other (Mount Herzl to Pisgat Ze’ev) is about an hour.
The passengers are the most perplexed by the city’s decision to route the train through Shuafat. “I used to live in Pisgat Ze’ev before the second intifada, and there was an Egged bus line that went through Shuafat, but then it got stoned every day so they canceled it. I just don’t understand why they didn’t think that there would be problems having the train go through there. I didn’t even know this was the intended route, and it really surprises me,” says Rubinstein.
Another man, B. Reichman, recalls the old days. “I remember in 1975 we used to go into Ramallah to get food and thought nothing of it.
But not today.”
Rubinstein wonders if there is a larger connection to politics. “The Arabs here don’t want to be part of the Palestinian Authority. I remember that in 2000 Ehud Barak wanted to give this section to [Yasser] Arafat, but I think now the train sends a clear message that Beit Hanina and all this is staying part of Jerusalem and Israel.”
Reichman wonders about another problem. “Why doesn’t the train run under the street like in London? I’ve never heard of such a thing like this, where it just runs in the street and people can walk on the tracks. There aren’t even fences to keep the pedestrians back.”
Perhaps he has not been to Switzerland. “Switzerland, sure, but Israel isn’t Switzerland.”
As the train enters Shuafat, the passengers seem nervous and perplexed. One modern Orthodox couple gets off at ASahal, the southern Shuafat stop, apparently thinking that they had taken the wrong train.
An Orthodox man and his wife exit at the next stop, Shuafat Central, which is right across from the central mosque, and they too seem confused about where they have ended up.
There is a decent security presence, however, consisting of five armed men. An Arab woman asks, “Are they Druse police?” and then notices the kippa on one security guard. “Are they crazy to have him here in the middle of this neighborhood?” she says.
Three local Arabs – two young women and a man of about 18 – are working for CityPass handing out fliers in Arabic. The young man, Muhammad, explains, “No one from here is riding the train today; they are in the mosque. It’s Ramadan, so most people are fasting and praying. And anyway, it is Friday prayers, which are bigger.”
He’s right. The mosque is packed to the brim.
Back on the train there seems to be a problem.
It enters Pisgat Ze’ev just fine, but then coming back it suffers some sort of delay. The information screens at the station, which are supposed to indicate when the next train is coming, change to read “Due to technical difficulties, expect disruptions in service.” Fifteen minutes later, however, a train does come to the station and proceeds towards the center of the city. 
In the ensuing days, the train service in Jerusalem has not improved.
Trains run infrequently, sometimes more than 15 minutes apart, and often the signs indicating how long until they come are wrong. The carriages are filled to capacity with people, partly a result of parents taking their children to see the new form of transportation and partly because there are not enough trains on the line. The drivers allow the trains to wait at the stations for an indeterminate amount of time, up to three minutes, closing and opening the doors, shouting at the passengers to move away from the doors, and so on. The CityPass workers continually say, “It will improve; it’s new,” but the workers have had six months of testing to work out these kinds of kinks.
As it stands at the moment, the light rail does not seem to be a solution for people wanting to commute efficiently in the city, but that remains to be seen.