Rails, Not Roads

By: Prof. Shlomo Maital, TIM Academic Director

      She's got a ticket to ride -- and she don't care.
        - The Beatles

With apologies to the Beatles: I've got a ticket to ride (the train) -- and I do care.

I work in Tel Aviv once or twice a week and always take the train. I board at Hof Hacarmel station in Haifa at 6:18 a.m., reach Tel Aviv (University station) at 7:00 a.m. and a short cab ride gets me to work by about 7:15 -- fewer than 60 minutes total travel time. As a senior citizen I get a half-price discount -- the train ticket costs just NIS 13 ($3.25). On the train I doze, send emails (using a cellular modem), drink coffee, read the newspaper, plan my day -- and look out the window at the traffic jams on Ayalon Highway. Often my colleagues who drive from nearby Bat Hefer (near Netanya) or Herzliyah take longer to get to work than I do, coming 50 miles by train from Haifa. Frankly, were it not for the fast convenient train ride, I doubt I would endure the traffic and work in Tel Aviv at all. And I know many others like me.

This is in part why I am a big fan of the Binyamin Netanyahu government's plan to cover Israel with tracks. Prime Minister Netanyahu's Office, led by Netanyahu's personal economic advisor Uri Yogev, has laid plans for an ambitious NIS 50 billion ($12.5 billion) expansion of Israel's rail system, laying tracks from Kiryat Shmona in the north to Eilat in the south. Under the plan, rail lines would run along Highway 90 from Eilat to Beersheva, then north along Highway 6 to Wadi Ara, again meeting Highway 90 and running north to Rosh Pina and Kiryat Shmona. One branch line will connect Acre to the Amiad junction, via Carmiel; another will extend from Haifa to the Jordanian border through the Jezreel Valley; and a third from Ashkelon to Beersheva, linking Netivot and Ofakim. The project is planned for completion by the year 2020. 

Despite corruption charges, inefficiency and political appointees, Israel Railroads has boomed in recent years. From a base of only 4.3 million passengers in 1994, some 37 million passengers will ride the rails in 2009, more than five times Israel's population. There are 975 kilometers (nearly 600 meters) of track, 47 stations and 338 trains, some of them brand new and built by Bombardier and Siemens. Israel Railroads also carries cargo, including 1.6 million tons of phosphates from the Dead Sea for export and 2.5 million tons of containers.   

Israel's Finance Ministry, led by former budget director Rami Belnikov (who resigned on May 13 in protest over the so-called 2009-10 budget 'package deal') sees Netanyahu's rail plan as a huge waste of money. The Finance Ministry believes that heavy trains are unsuited for short-haul routes. However, so-called 'light rail' systems, like those underway in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem with lighter trains that can stop frequently, have so far been a flop. Jerusalem's tangled light-rail construction is years behind schedule and way over budget. Tel Aviv's light-rail project is in trouble, too.
   
I spoke about Netanyahu's railroad expansion plan with Technion professor, Daniel Gat, an expert on urban planning. Professor Gat says the theory behind expanding Israel's rail lines is well-known abroad. It is known as TOD -- transit-oriented development. TOD is a new trend in creating compact, walkable communities centered around high quality train systems. This makes it possible to live a higher quality life without complete dependence on a car for mobility and survival. According to TOD, train stations are at the town center, pedestrians get top priority (over cars), and high density housing exists within a 10 minute walk from the train.
    
According to Professor Gat, by placing rail lines throughout peripheral regions, governments signal commitment to these regions. Typically, on one side of the train station, there is a residential area; on the other, industry. Residents can walk to work. Or they can hop on a train and be in the big city within minutes. Why live in the expensive, crowded big city when you can have a job close to home, enjoy the open spaces of the periphery, yet at the same time access shopping and entertainment in the city whenever you wish via the train. When the railroad arrives, so do investments. Israel's Law to Encourage Investment has largely failed to bring industry to peripheral areas. Why not try TOD? 

Professor Gat showed me an article by Robert Cervero, ranking world expert on TOD. Cervero showed that in Santa Clara County, California, land values in the business district more than doubled when a commuter rail station opened within a quarter of a mile. This will happen in Israel, too. Land values in Carmiel, Ofakim and Netivot will rise when the railroad arrives. This is only one of the many hidden benefits of the Netanyahu plan. Wealth generally flows to Tel Aviv like a magnet. Why not create a reverse trickle of wealth toward development towns for a change?

Israelis who travel abroad enjoy the fast trains in France and Germany, the Japanese bullet train from Osaka to Tokyo and the amazing Chinese Maglev train from Shanghai to the airport. Haifa University Professor Yehuda Hayut notes how in America in the Port of Seattle trains enter the docks and have containers unloaded directly from ships to trains, which then reach their destination rapidly and efficiently anywhere in America. Why cannot Israel do the same? Why cannot Israeli ports ultimately be the port of choice for all Mideast cargos with containers moving swiftly and directly from ship to train?   

Respected Hebrew University economist Reuben Gronau opposes the railroad plan. He argues that the operating costs of trains on intercity lines are two to three times more than that of a bus. According to Gronau's calculations, Israel's government subsidized train riders to the tune of NIS 1 billion last year, or some NIS 30 per rider. "Better to send each one in a taxi!" he claims. A long-time foe of monopolies such as Bezeq (the once government-owned telephone company), Gronau seems to dislike Israel Railroads partly for that reason.

Gronau may be right that train rides are subsidized. But car rides have concealed hidden costs. Each car trip from Haifa to Tel Aviv causes noise, pollution and above all wasted time as we sit trapped in nerve-jangling traffic jams. I estimate the average Israeli driving to work in Tel Aviv earns about NIS 12,000 a month, for 160 hours of work, or NIS 75 ($17.50) an hour. Commuters stuck in traffic for 30 wasted minutes incur an opportunity cost of NIS 37.50. This is a real cost because our time is valuable − but it is ignored by the Finance Ministry because it does not appear anywhere in the government budget. Thus drivers pay hidden taxes to the government as they suffer from endless, ever-worsening jams. The only solution: Get people out of their cars and onto trains. The more roads we build, the more cars people buy and the worse the traffic jams. Rails, not roads!

Gronau told Haaretz columnist Merav Arlozorov, "Trains made the deserts bloom in the 19th C. when it was the only means of transportation, but in the 21st C. every place is linked by roads." He echoes author E.B. White, who once wrote, "Everywhere in life is somewhere else, and you get there by car."

Why? Why not by rail? Why not have 60 million Israelis a year buy tickets to ride? It makes a lot more sense. 

Let's hope Netanyahu wins this battle against the Finance Ministry and the economists. Let's hope that rails triumph over roads.

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*This article originally appeared in the Jerusalem Report's Marketplace column, June 22, 2009.