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The Metropolitan Jerusalem Master Plan
The Metropolitan Jerusalem Master Plan
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Mevaserret Zion
Neve Ilan
Shoresh
Beit El
Ramallah
Givat Ze’ev
Beit Chanina
Gev Binyamin
Dead Sea
Ein Karem
Maaleh Adumim
Horkania
Airport
Ramat
Rachel
Gilo
Beitar Illit
Neve Daniel
Tekoa
Bethlehem
The
Old City
Suburban Radial Road
Radial Road
Tunnel
Tunnel
Train tracks
Intersection
Kochav Ya’akov
Main Modes of Transportation in Jerusalem
Transportation
T
he transportation system is the main
component in the functioning of
any city, as a city cannot function
without one. Hence, the Jerusalem 5800
plan includes a comprehensive plan for
transportation. The transportation plan
was created by an interdisciplinary team of
transportation planners and the resulting
plan takes on the transportation for the
entirety of metropolitan Jerusalem in 2050.
As a preamble to the preparation
of this plan, the team analyzed existing
plans. It turned out that Netivei Yisrael
(Israel’s national transport infrastructure
company), the Jerusalem Municipality,
and the Ministry of Interior’s Jerusalem
Planning Chamber all had existing plans for
transportation. But a thorough analysis of
these led to the inevitable conclusion that
even if all of the projects in these existing
plans were carried out over the coming
decades, the transportation system would
still be overburdened, and the metropolis
would not be able to maintain daily routine
transportation functionality for the purposes
of economy and tourism.
An analysis of the current transportation
situation on the roads, taking into
consideration the topography of Jerusalem,
shows that metropolitan Jerusalem is very
close to maximum capacity on available
roads. A closer look at the possibility of
improving the existing road infrastructure
by means of reasonable investment led
us to the conclusion that if use of public
transportation is similar in 2050 to that of
today, and population growth goes on as
expected, metropolitan Jerusalem’s roads will
be congested in a manner that will not allow
reasonable movement.
Simply stated, in order to allow for
existing traffic patterns, according to which
most travelers use private transportation
and only a minority use public, to continue,
unreasonable investments will be needed for
building roads, bridges, tunnels. Otherwise,
the transportation system will collapse.
The assumption which led to this was
that by 2050, Jerusalem would become an
“international city” with a population of
4 to 5 million people, to which 12 million
visitors, tourists, and pilgrims would flock
every year. In addition to this, a gigantic
center of employment is being planned for
Atarot, where over 400,000 people would be
employed, adding to the smaller and medium
sized planned or existing ones throughout
the metropolis.
In light of this, in order to allow the
metropolis to function on the anticipated
level, a revolutionary approach was
researched – one, wherein Jerusalem
would function in 2050 as “the city of
public transportation”, a city wherein the
overwhelming majority of daily travel would
not employ private transportation, rather,
others (public transportation, walking,
biking, etc.).
The process of preparing the plan was
compatible with the planning process for
transportation," to serve public authorities
in Israel: it is based on a quantitative analysis,
uses demand models, and analysis of the
transportation network in order to examine
the compatibility between the intensity
of activity, the demand for transportation
it creates, and the transportation system’s
capacity and level of service.
In order to allow the
metropolis to function,
a revolutionary approach
was researched – one
in which Jerusalem
would function in
2050 as “the city of
public transportation,”
a city wherein the
overwhelming majority
of travel would
not employ private
transportation
Transportation