Traffic Reports

The Commute

Yair Assaf-Shapira

Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies 

www.jiis.org

In the future, the commute time between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv is supposed to be shorter than it is today. Will this have an effect on residential choices? Will more people opt to live in Tel Aviv and work in Jerusalem, or maybe vice versa? When planning for the future, it's usually a good idea to start with the present and look at the current trends.

According to the Central Bureau of Statistics' Workforce Survey, in 2013 Jerusalem was the workplace of 293,000 workers, the majority of whom (224,700) also resided in the city. Most of the 68,600 workers commuting from outside of Jerusalem reside in its periphery (Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria districts). This sums up to 48,100 commuters. Meanwhile, 16,600 workers come to Jerusalem from the Center (Central and Tel Aviv Districts), and the rest commute from the South, the North, and Haifa. We may assume that people commuting from the Center make up most of the potential riders of the train and the upgraded Route 1 to Jerusalem.

What about travel in the opposite direction? Will the trains from Jerusalem in the morning leave full? Will they carry more passengers than those arriving from Tel Aviv? The number of workers residing in Jerusalem and commuting to localities outside of the city stands at 34,000, or about half of the number of people commuting into the city. Of this group, 10,300 work in the Center (2,900 of them in Tel Aviv proper), making up the potential riders from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv. If the train were to open today, the Tel Aviv-to-Jerusalem direction would be the busier one. 

Car counts from roads connecting Jerusalem to the Center reveal a somewhat similar trend. From 6:00—10:00, some 9,300 cars entered Jerusalem via road no. 1 (the measuring point was located between Sha'ar Hagai and Shoresh; data are averages of the years 2012-13), and about 6,600 cars entered via road no. 443 (the measuring point was located between Modi'in and Giv'at Ze'ev; data are for 2015). Measuring these together, there are approx. 15,900 cars driving from the Center towards Jerusalem during these four hours. During the same hours, some 13,300 cars were traveling in the opposite direction on the same road segments. An opposite trend occurs in the afternoon, as commuters return from work. Between 14:00—18:00, some 17,200 cars were traveling in the direction of Tel Aviv, compared to 15,300 cars traveling in the direction of Jerusalem.

It appears that there is a substantial travel demand in both directions, a trend which stems from the fact that different people want different things. We can assume that this trend will continue to prevail and that the commute direction from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem will remain stronger even when the commute time will be shorter. The number of commuters in both directions will likely grow substantially.

Take the Keys but It’s Registered in My Name

Lior Regev

Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies 

 www.jiis.org

Last August, after years of planning and delays, work began on the first line (the Red Line) of the light rail in Metropolitan Tel Aviv. The complex infrastructure works that are taking place in the heart of the metropolis have raised concerns and tempers among merchants and business owners worried about loss of income and clients. The efforts it took to build and operate the light rail in Jerusalem teach us that the process of constructing a public transportation route in a built-up area that serves as an urban center can be expected to involve difficult labor pains.

Although it has improved in recent years, the municipal public transportation system here is not as developed as that of cities in Western Europe. The limited mobility, in addition to lack of public transportation on Saturday, leads many to purchase a private vehicle. According to data of the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), in 2014 more than 2.1 million vehicles were registered in Israel. Some 83% (close to 1.8 million) of these were private cars (neither public nor commercial), and the remainder comprised taxicabs, trucks, buses, minibuses, and two-wheeled vehicles. 

In terms of locality, evidently even though Jerusalem has 23,000 more households than Tel Aviv (210,000 and 186,000, respectively), the number of private cars registered in Jerusalem is about 25% lower than the number for Tel Aviv (161,000 for Jerusalem compared with 214,000 for Tel Aviv).

Rishon LeZion – presumably because it is a suburb where many residents work in the metropolis – holds the record for the number of private cars per household, with an average of 1.18 cars per household. Tel Aviv is next, with 1.15 cars per household, and Haifa is in third place at 0.93. The average number of cars per household in Jerusalem is 0.77, slightly higher than the average for Israel, at 0.76.

One can imagine several reasons for the higher number of cars in Tel Aviv: Jerusalem residents are less wealthy on average and therefore less able to handle the expenses of a car. Additionally, Tel Aviv constitutes a center of business, and a profile of its residents includes more workers in free trades, who are willing and able to pay for increased mobility and time saved. 

But this is only a partial explanation. Traffic jams are the lot of any city such as Tel Aviv, the core city of a metropolis, just as other core cities throughout the world have to cope with ongoing traffic congestion. In other words, if you live in the inner city, a car might not necessarily improve your mobility in getting around the city, certainly not if a light rail line is being installed. Another reason lies in the system of registering vehicles by address.

The CBS classifies vehicles according to the address of the owner. For this reason, many cars are registered in Tel Aviv, when in fact they are registered in the name of private companies that operate in the city. These are in addition to state-owned cars and cars on lease. In sum, the number of cars in a city provides a direct measure of economic activity in the city, and serves as another indicator of the economic strength of the city.

Into the City

Yair Assaf-Shapira

One of the key characteristics of a major city is its force of attraction, or the number of non-residents who enter the city. We usually measure a city’s force of attraction by the number of employees who come into the city for work – the commuters who are characteristic of any metropolis. But people come into a major city for a variety of purposes, including studies, culture, “errands,” and more. As it turns out, working commuters appear not to be the majority of non-residents who come into Jerusalem. This conclusion emerges from an examination of the number of vehicles that enter the city.

During the years 2009-2010, a total of 69,000 of Jerusalem’s employees were non-residents; that is, they entered the city for the purpose of work. But traffic statistics reveal that the number of vehicles entering the city daily was much higher. In 2011 the number was 140,000 vehicles daily (Sunday through Thursday), and of course some of these vehicles contained more than one person. This number refers to all hours in a 24-hour period.

On regular weekdays, the road with the highest volume of traffic among Jerusalem’s entryways is Highway 1 from the direction of Mevasseret Zion, by which 59,000 vehicles enter the city. Additional roads by which large numbers of vehicles enter are Highway 1 from the direction of Ma’ale Adummim (24,000), Highway 404 (extension of Highway 443) from the north (18,000), and Highway 60 from the direction of Gush Etzion (13,000).

It is important to note that some of the vehicles entering the city constitute “through traffic,” meaning that they continue to a different destination. But we may presume that in Jerusalem (as opposed to Tel Aviv, for example) this is a small portion of the traffic.

Another question that might be explored through traffic statistics is the volume of commuters to Jerusalem compared to commuters from Jerusalem. For these purposes, we will examine the stretch of Highway 1 between Shoresh and Sha’ar Hagai. The statistics reveal that during morning hours (7am – 10am) the number of vehicles traveling towards Jerusalem is higher than the number traveling towards the plains region (between the Judean hills and the seashore) by 260-650 vehicles/hour. For example, at 9am, on average 2,660 vehicles/hour travel towards Jerusalem, while 2,010 travel towards the plains. In the afternoon (between 1pm and 5pm), the number of travelers towards the plains region is higher than the number of those traveling towards Jerusalem by 250-600 vehicles/hour. For example, at 3pm, an average of 2,930 vehicles travel towards the plains, compared to 2,340 vehicles traveling towards Jerusalem during that hour. Thus it turns out that during the typical hours for commuting to work, there is more traffic towards Jerusalem than the opposite way, whereas the situation is reversed during the typical hours for commuting from work.

Source of data: Traffic statistics for non-municipal roads, the Central Bureau of Statistics
The 2012 Statistical Yearbook of Jerusalem, Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies