Miri Regeva’s Ministry of Transport is not achieving its goals for 2024

It is headed by the Israeli Miri Regev Ministry of Transport failed to meet targets by 2024. The length of public transport lanes has hardly increased, the number of deaths in road accidents has reached a peak not seen in 20 years, and even gigantic projects are being postponed.

This means that despite ambitious plans and allocated budgets, the ministry is struggling to fulfill its core functions of improving public transport and ensuring road safety.

Tracks remain on paper

Every year, the government publishes an annual work plan. The goals for 2023 included an increase in the length of public transport lanes in the country from 456 kilometers to 550 kilometers.

However, in reality, the length of public transport lanes at the end of that year was 476 kilometers, an increase of only 20 kilometers. The Ministry of Transport’s explanation that the war slowed down the pace of project implementation is also far-fetched, because it began less than three months before the end of the year.

A significant number of these priority lanes are implemented by the Ministry of Transport on intercity roads, and also include lanes where cars with one or more additional passengers are allowed (plus lanes or shared lanes).

Tel Aviv Movement (by MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)

The plan also includes local government measures through agreements with the ministry. For example, in Tel Aviv only, which has an independent policy on this issue, there are 73 kilometers of public transport lanes.

There are real difficulties in promoting public transport lanes due to political opposition from local authorities, mainly because they are often done at the expense of existing car lanes or parking spaces.

Consistently and under the leadership of all ministers, the Ministry of Transport does not put pressure on the authorities to promote bus lanes, but prefers an incentive policy.

Despite their importance and the difficulty of promoting them, and after a poor performance in 2023, bus lanes were dropped from the government’s 2024 work plan and did not appear as a goal at all. In response to a Globes inquiry, the ministry said only nine bus lanes of more than 12 kilometers were paved last year, far short of the ministry’s target three years ago.

Undoubtedly, the war slowed down the pace of the project, and the local elections, which were postponed to February 2024, also caused a freeze on progress due to mayors who were preoccupied with legal disputes before the elections. But these are not all explanations.

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The announced policy of Transport Minister Miri Regev is inconsistent. On the one hand, she publicly advocates the asphalting of public transport lanes, and on the other, she demands that some of them be canceled and turned into car lanes.

It also sought to reduce enforcement and reduce the requirement for cars to travel in lane 1 from two additional passengers to just one. Sources in the industry claim that the professional level does not have support in negotiations with mayors.

The previous goal was set during the previous government of Merava Mihaeli, but transport policy, as it requires long-term planning, also requires consistency. The removal of the target shows that the Ministry of Transport is not measured by its main activity. These goals were also supported in the budgets, when the 2021 budget decided to finance a five-year plan to pave public transport lanes at a cost of 5.4 billion shekels. However, years later it becomes clear that a significant part of the funds aimed at improving public transport will remain in the state treasury and will not be used in practice.

In 2023, the ministry did not meet the planned indicators

The government’s 2023 target also included reducing road traffic fatalities from 5.1 deaths per billion kilometers traveled to 4.9. In fact, according to data provided by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to the Globes, there were 5.5 fatalities per billion kilometers driven in 2023.

After failing to achieve the goal, the Ministry of Transport, when preparing the plan for 2024, changed the criteria and checked the number of dead in relation to the population. It explained at the time that “the safety picture can be distorted when people switch from private to public transport – the number of people traveling decreases and the ratio of fatalities to people artificially traveling increases”, while according to an index comparing number of deaths with population size, the expected decrease is 5% each year.

In 2023, the death rate per population was 3.67 deaths per 100,000. population, and the plan for 2024 is 3.48. In fact, it jumped to 4.4. Not surprising, because Israel does not have a national road safety plan embedded in the budget, and it is not included in the 2025 budget either.

Thus, the Ministry of Transport failed two main goals: public transport and road safety. Major projects now moving forward have also faced delays. Completion dates for the fourth rail line along Tel Aviv’s Ayalon Highway and the rail electrification project have been pushed back, as has the completion of Tel Aviv’s Green and Purple light rail lines.

The Ministry of Transport promises that 20 bus lanes will be built by 2025, and work will begin on BRT lines in the Greater Tel Aviv area – the blue between Rehovot and Rishon Lezion and the brown between Rishon lezion and Ramle and Lod .

Along with the failure to achieve last year’s targets, there was some progress in the area of structural changes in the industry. In the state budget, it is proposed to create metropolitan transport management bodies in accordance with recommendations and decisions that have been on paper for 20 years, but the composition of the authorities also attracts criticism.

In addition, the ministries are pushing ahead with a move to regulate the bus and port sectors, which has been agreed but still delayed. Also on the agenda is a dramatic and secret deal between ministries to lift Regev’s opposition to the congestion charge in exchange for a train to Kiryat Shmona.

The Ministry of Transport said: “About 90 kilometers of lanes are planned on more than 20 lanes across the country this year. Minister Regev expressed her position in favor of public transport lanes, provided that they will fulfill their purpose. The Minister adopted the Government Resolution on the establishment of the Ministerial Committee to Combat Traffic Accidents.