Downtown Jerusalem gridlock

August 17, 2008 - 11:36 AM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: General, Life, Travel 

Jaffa Road last weekGetting to and from work hasn’t been easy lately. Located just off of Zion Square in downtown Jerusalem, it’s been feeling lately like my office is situated in the nerve center of one of the country’s biggest crowd management fiascos.

The entire city center stretch of Jaffa Rd. is currently being dug up in the name of major public transportation improvements, and traffic patterns in the entire area have been disrupted – both for pedestrians and motor vehicles. Downtown’s streets have been rough going since pipeline upgrades began about five years ago (also in the name of the light rail), but the extreme measures being taken now bring a new level to the chaos.

Pedestrian traffic now moves behind cage-like barriers, with few opportunities to cross the street, or even to pass the person walking painfully slowly in front of you. And for the kilometer or so between the Davidka and the corner of Shlomtzion, buses and taxis are now relegated to one meager lane of motion, meaning that certain blocks of Jaffa Rd. move only westward while others move only eastward. Poorly marked bus stops make for a guessing game as to where one can catch which bus, headed in whichever direction, as rerouted lines wait one-by-one to snake up Wallenberg and/or Strauss so they can travel on Neviim St. in order to circumvent the closures.

Sound confusing? Even the bus drivers don’t get it, seemingly permanent shrugs answering off an endless flow of dismayed bus stop searchers, who have been spotted walking the ten minutes from downtown to Machane Yehuda in order to get there faster than the bus they missed back in Zion Square and ride two stops to the Central Bus Station.

Local business owners are up in arms over the situation, recent debates over coordination and compensation becoming heated and emotional at city hall. Some have even opened that the situation may even represent a tipping point in the capitol’s upcoming mayoral race, with Nir Barkat positioning himself as a vocal champion of the merchants, while the incumbent, Uri Lupolianski, refers to them as de facto rabble-rousing opportunists. And the latest polls show that Haredi internal politics might be paving the way for a Barkat victory.

However, all of the parties involved seem to be forgetting a few key points. One, as uncoordinated as the project has been, it’s been talked about as imminently happening for years, and we all could have better prepared ourselves. Two, downtown is far from dead: Walk on any street that’s only indirectly affected by the digging (King George, Ben Yehuda, Bezalel, Hillel), and you’ll see a vibrant scene with healthy circulation. And three, you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs: In seven or so years from now, when the central Jerusalem facelift is complete and the Bridge of Strings actually carries vehicles on a regular basis, the hope is that we’ll all agree that what we dealt with back in 2008 was well worth it.

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