Several steps to improve Egged public bus service to the
Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramot were implemented on Rosh
Chodesh Elul. The steps were determined by the Advisory
Council for Transportation and presented to the Jerusalem
deputy mayors and representatives of the chareidi parties, who
expressed their satisfaction at the plans. Egged's Jerusalem
Director of Operations, Yossi Chechik, notes that the
improvements in the bus lines to Ramot are an expression of
Egged's policy of studying the needs of its passengers and
then implementing traffic patterns and bus lines in accordance
with these findings.
A new bus line number 37 will connect Ramot with the Ramat
Shlomo (Shuafat) neighborhood. The new line, travelling
directly from Ramot to Ramat Shlomo and back, will be of great
benefit to residents of both neighborhoods. Line 37 will pick
up passengers in Ramot along the existing bus 16 route,
continuing directly to Ramat Shlomo, letting passengers off
there at the number 11 stops. Timetables were set according to
the transportation needs of neighborhood school children,
bnei yeshiva, avreichim and other residents.
Line 35 will now go from Ramot to the Egged station in Givat
Shaul at the entrance to Har Nof, through Machaneh Yehudah. A
new line, 36A, will replace line 40. Line 32 will connect
Ramot and Gilo. Line 34 will connect Ramot and the southern
part of the city, reaching the Malcha Shopping Mall.
Director of Traffic for Egged Jerusalem, Ronen Chalifa, along
with Rabbi Aviezer Glicksberg, Deputy Regional Director for
Egged Chareidi Services, stressed that the main factor taken
into consideration in the present plan was to provide
efficient service for public transportation consumers. The
needs of neighborhood residents, new road development, the
ever-expanding Jerusalem neighborhoods and the new business
and shopping centers were all considerations in the changes in
the service to Ramot.
Egged's Director of Jerusalem Operations, Yossi Chechik,
praised the cooperation between Egged and the various chareidi
groups that had worked together to come up with a viable
transportation plan for Ramot residents. Egged monitors will
continue to assess the situation, and changes will be made if
necessary.
Jerusalem Police Check Egged Buses
The Jerusalem Police Traffic Department has disqualified 25
Egged buses with defective tires. Sixty Egged buses were
checked following a number of recent blowouts that created
panic and the necessity to rush security forces and police to
the scene, thinking that the loud booms were terrorist
attacks.
The Jerusalem Police has expressed its exasperation to Egged
about this matter on a number of occasions, especially during
the current situation when Police must be on high alert. Egged
promised to check all of its buses that are currently
operating. Immediately following the horrendous attack at the
Sbarro restaurant in the center of town, a tire blowout on a
bus at the Jerusalem Central Bus Station caused a great deal
of panic. The Jerusalem Police decided to take matters into
their own hands and to perform the tire checks themselves.
