The prolonged battle by Beitar Illit residents and the City
of Beitar Illit led to a major achievement at the beginning
of the week when a tender was issued for a new bus company to
take over public transport operations in the city. The move
followed long months of talks at the Transportation Ministry
with city representatives taking part, to prepare the
technical specifications for the tender.
For months Beitar residents have been waging a campaign
against the inadequate service provided by the current
provider, Beitar Tour. Mayor Rabbi Yitzchok Pindrus and
Deputy Mayor Rabbi Meir Rubinstein held innumerable meetings
with ranking Transportation Ministry officials who were
impervious to the hundreds of complaints residents have made
regarding the bus company's poor service. The majority of the
complaints were for failing to adhere to departure times,
delays of up to several hours, waiting in the rain and sun
for buses that failed to arrive, failures to dispatch buses
listed on the schedule, inadequate service during times of
heavy usage and critical times, such as Erev Shabbos and Erev
Chagim.
The municipality even set up a legal bureau that gathered the
hundreds of complaints and presented them in an orderly
manner to the Transportation Ministry, the State Comptroller
and Beitar Tour.
City residents were especially irate when the Transportation
Ministry illegally — since there is supposed to be
public bidding — signed another six-year agreement with
Beitar Tour at the height of a public campaign against the
bus company. When the municipality realized that the
Transportation Ministry did not intend to cancel the illegal
contract Mayor Pindrus and Deputy Mayor Rubinstein decided to
petition the Court for Administrative Affairs in
Jerusalem.
The court accepted the petition and the two sides reached an
agreement to cancel the contract between Beitar Tour and the
Transportation Ministry and to issue a new tender by
September 15th. While the tender was being prepared a survey
was conducted to assess the city's transportation needs, but
when Deputy Transportation Ministry Rabbi Shmuel Halpert
learned the survey, which had been commissioned by the
Transportation Ministry, was being executed in a shoddy
manner, not during peak hours, and did not accurately reflect
the city's needs, a new survey was ordered and it was
eventually used as the basis for the tender.
Rabbi Pindrus and Rabbi Rubinstein were pleased with the
announcement of the new tender following months of
preparation, saying that after several years of real
suffering and the concomitant growth in the number of
residents, kein yirbu, the city desires good, reliable
service to help thousands of Beitar residents make their way
every day to Torah halls, educational institutions and places
of work in Jerusalem and other cities.
This week Rabbi Rubinstein called upon Transportation
Ministry representatives to closely oversee Beitar Tour's
operations during the coming period due to concerns during
its final months the company will reduce the number of buses
and the hours of operation, despite the requirements
prescribed by law. "We will not hesitate to turn to every
possible entity to ensure pubic transportation operates
smoothly in the few months Beitar Tour has left in the City
of Beitar Illit," he said.
