📰 The brilliant Asaf Zagrizak interviewed me recently for Globes, a prominent Israeli economic daily newspaper and a news site.
💡 We discussed some of the insights I gathered during my time as the unit manager for roads infrastructure at Palestinian localities in Israel at Ayalon Highways. Brief highlights include:
📝 Ambitious plan as a key to success
💷 Funding challenges to achieve plans’ goals
🚍 Dedicated bus lanes in rural localities
🔋 Alternatives for rural mobility services
📝 I mentioned the importance of an ambitious strategic plan we led at Ayalon Highways to reduce transportation network gaps. The plan set a budget of 20 billion NIS (about 5.44 billion Euro) for the next decade.
💷 In our estimation, we were able to utilize almost NIS 8 billion worth of projects within five years (about 2.17 billion Euro). But only 1 billion NIS (about 272 million Euros) was received by 2022, and another 1 billion NIS should be budgeted for 2023. However, the 2023 figures are dependent upon how quickly current projects are planned and executed.
🚍 Many of the projects in the strategic plan are “public transport projects”, which means that they will make buses more accessible to streets and neighborhoods they can’t reach today, but there will be no dedicated bus lanes. This is because in most localities, the first thing that should be done is to build a strategic network of roads on which buses can travel, and only later, when the level of service and coverage are sufficient, should dedicated bus lanes be considered.
🔋 Last but not least, it is necessary to reduce the dependence on private cars, but a bus may not be the only solution. Since most of these localities are rural, other mobility solutions should be considered, ones that can be adapted to low-density towns and villages.