But Dougal, it's not really magic, said Florence

When the traffic lights are green, what does this mean to an Israeli driver?

"Step on the gas", of course.

At least, that's the answer I got when I asked a hall full of engineering students when I recently gave a lecture on Road Design: Thinking Outside the Box.

That was quite an experience I can tell you. When I recall the lectures I attended in England way back in the previous century, I think of hundreds of students sitting in tiered lecture theatres (lovely term) hanging on to every word, as some lecturer espouses a theorem, defines a school of thought, or attempts a joke, while imparting his or her pearls of wisdom. Noticeably, other than the lecturer, the room is silent. Not one student speaks.

Now shift the camera to Israel, and zoom in on some lecture theatre, here. You'll find a very different picture. The more appropriate word that springs to mind is Interaction. Noise. Audience participation.

A new experience certainly.

So I delighted the crowd with some pearls of wisdom. On roads, and how they could be safer.

Roads are notoriously dangerous in Israel. Though now I've said it, I should qualify that.

It's all relative. Very possibly it's more dangerous crossing the road in Delhi, having to maneuver between 15 lanes of trucks, cars, buses (all belching out lethal fumes) bicycles, rickshaws, scooters, motorbikes (often carrying an entire family) and a cow or two.

When I first arrived in Israel many years ago, in my innocent stage, when everything seemed achievable, accessible, agreeable and at the same time unintelligible, I approached the Road Safety Authority. I met with the chairman and suggested, in my childish innocence, some ways of improving the design of roads in Israel. At one point, I made some comparison to England, to which he immediately bristled. He poohpoohed my suggestions. (Now, when was the last time you had a good "poohpooh"?)."Well of course," he dismissed, "England's at the top of the league in safety", as if it was ridiculous I should even mention it in the same sentence as road safety in Israel, as if the two worlds had nothing in common, and he showed me the door. But let's not be put off by his appalling attitude. (He was also little concerned over the dreadful rates of pedestrians injured or killed on the roads, and I quote him here, "Yes, but many of them are foreigners."!! This was years ago, and I'm sure his replacement has more feeling. Possibly he was replaced by a biro. Actually, the government clearly thought something was amiss as the National Road Safety has seen its budget shrink over the years)

Photo: Architecture.org.il

Now back to the lecture.

You don't see many roundabouts in Israel. Certainly not on major roads, though they are popping up here and there in smaller urban intersections. Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, even Modi'in-Not-By-The-Sea has hopped on the bandwagon. This is encouraging.

Roundabouts are safer than regular junctions with traffic lights. And they're more efficient too.

How so?

Well they're more efficient in one simple way: you don't have to necessarily stop when you come to one. Slow down, certainly, but if there's no traffic around, off you go. Particularly at quieter times, traffic flows more smoothly over roundabouts. And having no traffic lights saves electricity. (Which would delight the Israel Electric Corporation, but I'm not even going to mention them this week).

And why are roundabouts safer?

Studies abroad showed that when a regular junction was replaced with a roundabout, accidents dropped by 40%, injuries fell by 80% and fatalities plummeted by over 90%.

Why?

First of all, serious accidents and injuries (including fatalities) are the result of side-on or head-on collisions. But at a roundabout, cars are never facing each other, or at right angles to each other. They merge, roughly moving off in the same direction (hopefully anti-clockwise).

But the other reason I and my enlightened Israeli students concluded was this: At a roundabout, the driver has to slow down, THINK and USE HIS/HER JUDGEMENT. So whilst the brain is in active mode, the driver is a safer driver.

At a traffic light, in contrast, the driver – in automatic mode – just watches the lights, and steps on the gas, as the students eloquently put it.

There are plenty of things in Israel that could drive you round the bend. But let's hope there'll be more reasons that will have us driving, safely, round a roundabout.

Warm, getting warmer ... HOT

In 1937, Sheikh Mohammad Ahmed Abdel Rahim, a wealthy resident of Jaffa, commissioned a new home for him and his family in the neigbourhood of Ajami, and the architect’s brief was clear and simple: the design should respect Rahim’s way of life (which meant private ante-rooms for the women of the family, and other ante-rooms for him to hold private sessions with the many locals who came to consult with him) and secondly, it should make it clear to all from outside that “Here lives the richest man in the neighbourhood”.
And indeed it is a beautiful home. I had a private tour of this delightful International-style house just last week as part of Tel Aviv’s Open House weekend. The weekend allows the public into private homes, and behind the scenes of all sorts of weird, wonderful and architecturally interesting places.
Rahim’s home is now the home of the French ambassador to Israel. It is exquisitely maintained, and furnished in the 1930s style. As we stood there, hearing the explanation of the building from none other than the son of the architect, I certainly felt warm, and that’s because the house still refuses to employ airconditioning. Buildings in those days would have incorporated little tricks and devices to encourage a natural circulation of air, or to minimize exposure to direct sunlight. The natural breeze blowing through the delightful salon was the aircon of the day. How original. And it must surely cut down on their electricity bills.
My next visit on the Weekend for Nosey Parkers was a “green” house, i.e. one that was environmentally friendly. Also in Ajami, this house minimized direct sunlight by facing south, and, in contrast to what you would have expected from a house overlooking the sea, by having no windows looking westward, to the sea. Sunlight was however utilized to light up the basement (clever! how did they do that?), and all the shower runoff water was recycled to water the garden (which was green, flowering, and even sported a vine or two). The high ceilings and overhead fans provided some air circulation, but these were rarely used as the design of the house was such that it kept it cooler, for longer. So again, someone was enjoying lower electricity bills. (The owner actually showed us his bills to prove the point).

I'm a great fan of natural breezes. (Photo:blog.freeshipping.com)

Is this ‘No Aircon’ status likely to catch on?
Well the Israel Electric Corporation, our monopolistic supplier of electricity, is actually encouraging us all to cut down on our aircon this summer. If you can use less electricity during the summer of 2012 than you did in 2011, you will earn yourself a discount of up to 20% off what you pay for your electricity. (Hurry, you must register by the end of the month to be eligible). Turn your aircon on later, turn it off sooner, raise the desired temp by just a tad: these are the useful tidbits of advice from the IEC. But why are they doing this? For our health, bless ‘em? I don’t think so. To help the environment? To help the what?! No, there’s a far simpler reason. The country simply doesn’t have enough electricity!
The all-knowing, all-super IEC is deeply worried that it’s going to run out of electricity one hot day this summer. It simply cannot produce enough electricity to satisfy all the demand around the country. Electricity cannot be stored, so all electricity suppliers across the globe have to be ready at all times. But there’s no point in spending billions on having enough capacity to generate 100 kWh if demand is only for 20. And worse still would be to be in a position to supply just 20, when the country demands 100. So a well managed business would work out just the right balance: investing enough on a “regular” supply capacity, with just the right amount beyond this that would mean it’s ready “just in case”. (Oh look, I managed to get the phrase “well managed business” in the same paragraph as “the Israel Electric Corporation”. I should get a Pulitzer prize for that, surely)
Well the IEC hasn’t quite worked out that “just in case” element. So one day in the summer of 2012, someone somewhere in Israel will turn on a kettle and KABOOM, the whole neighbourhood, town or city will find itself in the dark. We’ll be left with half-ironed shirts and half-cooked buns in the oven.
A well managed electricity supplier would be ready for such an event, but the IEC, instead of planning years ahead, and making the extraordinarily large investments necessary, is instead going for the “You, hey you with the funny haircut, Cut down on your electricity use!” approach.

Now some people like to take a bash at the IEC, but I’m not one of them. You could hold me down and threaten to tickle me, and I still won’t be drawn into that populistic sport. Let others bash it, but not me.
In fact, this week, the Nameless Inefficient Committee of Mostly Politicians or Other Obsolete Penpushers, or NINCOMPOOP for short did just that. The committee (its proper name is the Public Utility Authority: Electricity) rapped the IEC's knuckles very very hard for signing an exclusive gas-supply contract with the Tamar partnership. The IEC had signed a long-term contract with Tamar, which also happens to be a monopoly, with no thought that in the future it would be able to get a better deal, at lower prices. No, instead it had happily signed the contract which, at the end of the day, would mean higher prices for... yes, you guessed it, Jo Shmo. That's you. But I hope this doesn't get you all hot and bothered, because if it does, and you're minded to turn on a fan... oh, voy, voy, we could all go KABOOM.

Principles of economy, efficiency, effectiveness, for sale. Hardly used.

'Off with their heads!' was a favourite cry of the Queen of Hearts.

So how many heads were chopped off following the publication of the latest State Comptroller's report?

Surely you must have read it. There was nothing else worth reading in the past week. "Fascinating, as usual", "a must-read", "couldn't put it down" – were just some of the reviews. "Couldn't pick it up" may be nearer the truth, as it is indeed a weighty tome.

But who exactly is this State Comptroller? I hear you ask. (You may only have been thinking it but I have exceptionally good hearing).

He is a Knesset-appointed position, and his (or her) role is to examine the activities of the executive branch of government (that means the government, not the judges, and not whether the politicians are behaving themselves). In particular he checks that the government has carried out its activities "in line with the principles of economy, efficiency, effectiveness and moral integrity." Well that may keep him busy for Sunday, Monday, possibly Tuesday until tea time, but what does he do the rest of the week?

So in his capacity as ombudsman, too, he is empowered to look into complaints against government offices, state institutions, local governments etc. Well that covers state-owned enterprises like the Israel Electric Corp., though I can't imagine him finding anything untoward there.

The appointment is traditionally filled by a retired judge. The incumbent, Micha Lindenstrauss, has had a very good stretch, building on the strength of one predecessor Miriam Ben Porat, who, despite her advanced age, was sharp as a button. While Ben Porat would write damaging reports, they were always about individual X or Y. I felt quite sorry for X and Y, constantly being blamed, though, if you believed the muck that was unearthed on them, they were nasty pieces of work. However as the miscreants were always hidden behind those innocent letters, nothing was ever corrected.

Lindenstrauss took a bold innovative move, and actually named the individuals in his reports so that lessons could be learnt. Last week he issued one of his last reports (before he retires later this year), which, as usual, is a wonderful document well worth reading while you're waiting for your train to turn up.

In it, he slammed the ministries of finance and transport for the cock-up (sorry, of course he used the more technical term, "balls-up") of the planning of the fast lane into Tel Aviv. The new fast lane was mistakenly placed in a central strip of the existing motorway into Tel Aviv, an area that was designated for a future additional rail track. The mistake will come back to haunt someone--we're not sure who, at this point--when we the taxpayers will have to pay millions of shekels to shift the fast lane somewhere else when they finally get around to adding the fourth rail track. The mistake was discovered years ago, and if someone had acted upon it then, the project could have been diverted before it had even begun.

Lindenstrauss also slammed some misdemeanors at Israel Railways (apparently one of their train drivers earned his qualification from his uncle at the company), at Mekorot, the national water monopoly, (for paying 8 times the market value for land in Ceasarea), and the government (for allowing two dominant corporations to dominate the desalinated water market, without thinking that this could create a dangerous dependence in a country which is thirsty for new sources of water.)

So surely you were knocked over by the number of heads that rolled after each of the Comptroller's reports?

Of course, no one's head rolled, or will roll, because none of our politicians has an individual interest to take up any of the cases.

Had we an electoral system with constituencies, we could each gang up on our local representatives and at least get some response, a question asked in Knesset. Someone would have to respond.

But while we may hope and dream that such a system will get here one day, at least we have something meaty to read: The State Comptroller's Annual Report 2012 available on www.mevaker.gov.il, all 1804 pages. (I particularly enjoyed the joke in the penultimate paragraph on page 855).

Happy reading

Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm 64?

This week Israel celebrates its 64^th birthday. What better time than now, to reflect on the words of the Declaration of the State, as read out by David Ben Gurion all those years ago:

"THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open to the immigration of Jews and for the Ingathering of the Exiles from all countries of their dispersion; will promote the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; will be based on the precepts of liberty, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; will uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of race, creed or sex; will guarantee full freedom of conscience, worship, education and culture; will safeguard the sanctity and inviolability of the shrines and Holy Places of all religions; and will dedicate itself to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.

 …

PLACING OUR TRUST IN THE ROCK OF ISRAEL, we affix our signatures to this proclamation… in the city of Tel Aviv… on the 5^th of Iyar, 5708 (May 14, 1948)."

I love the "Rock of Israel" bit, which apparently was a euphemism for The One Above, and which satisfied both the religious and the anti-religious among them.

And it's rousing, patriotic stuff, and certainly worth reminding us all, what this country is all about. I could of course, add:

"THE STATE OF ISRAEL will promote the development of pensions and other freebies for workers [sic] in the Israel Electric Corporation, the Israel Defense Forces, and the Bank of Israel, even to the extent of cutting and withdrawing social benefits to the rest of the population; will cover as much land as possible by the widest and most wasteful roads that befit a tiny, densely populated modern state; and will patronize the weakest deciles of the population, irrespective of race, creed or sex, by promulgating an infinitesimally small tax change that improves their take-home pay by up to 12 shekels a month."

But I won't, because it just doesn't seem appropriate.

And Wednesday also sees one of the oddest, most peculiar features of the Israeli calendar. I'm referring to the juxtaposition (and we don't use that word often enough, do we, possums?) of the somber Memorial Day, which morphs, seamlessly, into the joyous Independence Day. And what better encapsulates this dichotomy than the extraordinary tale of Yona Malina.

He was born in Czechoslovakia in 1967, but his family moved to Switzerland when he was still young. He grew up not knowing his Jewish origins, as his family, devastated by the experiences of the Holocaust, chose to forget those origins. But in time, and with encouragement from his beloved grandmother, his full family history came to light and, as a young adult, he visited Israel, where he fell in love with the country.

He happily unearthed his Jewish roots, studied Hebrew (to add to his other fluent 7 languages) and the holy texts of Judaism, and adopted a Hebrew name, Yona.

In 1995, at the age of 28, just after finishing his ulpan (a five-month intensive Hebrew course for new immigrants, where I met Yona), whilst traveling to Hebrew University by bus, he was critically injured in a terror attack. The medical staff at Hadassah, however, managed to save his life, though he was paralyzed from the neck down, and remained dependent on life-support.

I visited Yona in the week after the incident, in the intensive care unit of Hadassah hospital. He was allowed one visitor at a time by his bed. He was unable to speak. Or, at least, he could move his lips, but given his condition at the time, no sound came out. It was the oddest conversation I had, as I had to lip-read to understand him, (which is pretty difficult). A nurse asked me what language Yona spoke, because so far she's heard every language under the sun from all the visitors and she didn't know what language she ought to speak to him in!

His amazing parents, the incredible Eva and Jan, flew Yona back to Switzerland where he was cared for in an institution which is regarded as one of the best in the world for people in such a condition. But Yona was not happy there, and insisted, despite his paralysis, that he be allowed to emigrate, once again, to Israel.

He did so. With the help and support of incredible friends and family, Yona returned and was placed in Tel Hashomer, that vast hospital-cum-village. Though well cared for there, it was not ideal, and he petitioned the High Court to live in his own residence away from the hospital. The High Court granted his request, and he moved, together with a round-the-clock staff into an apartment in Kiryat Ono. 

I used to visit him often, and his parents would fly out regularly. He continued to study, joke, be interested in all around him, and to travel, when possible.

The doctors had originally estimated that someone in Yona's condition could live just one year in that state. But Yona was exceptional, an optimist, an idealist, a fighter for what he believed in.

In 2005, he succumbed to an infection that knocked him out completely. I remember his mother telling me as he lay in a coma that week, "We're waiting for God to take him". He finally passed away, May 30, 2005, 10 years after the bomb attack.

He was 38.

***

May everyone enjoy a wonderful Yom Haatzmaut.

Is it just me, or are things getting better and better?

Why is this Pesach different?

Is it? Well it's Pesach 5772, spring of 2012, and we should be out there celebrating.

It's the spring holiday, the festive time of year when we eat dried sheets of cardboard and dream of chocolate Easter eggs. Traditionally, we remember when we, the Israelites, were delivered from slavery in Egypt, and became a free people.

I think it's highly appropriate that we take this opportunity--when Israel is being vilified in the international media, and when Israeli diplomats get invited only to the wrong parties--and count our lucky stars that we have what we do indeed have. No, I don't mean shingles. I mean, those everyday parts of our lives that have changed over the years, and which should remind us of how dreadful it used to be. So let's clap our hands, bang those cymbals, rattle those pots and pans, and thank The One Above for:

• Cheaper phone calls. Don't you remember you used to have to argue with Bezeq to get a new line, and then wait for months? And when you wanted to call abroad, you had to stay up till 2 in the morning to get the cheap rate, by which time you'd forgotten what it was you wanted to say? But then the phone sector was opened to competition and we never looked back. In the old days, we would have to make firm arrangements, by letter, three weeks in advance, to meet a friend at 9 (but obviously not turn up till 10 past). Now, however, with the latest smartass-phone technology, and for only 155 shekels a month, I can telepathically send an SMS to my friend who lives in the flat below, who I spoke to, via facebook not 3 seconds ago, just to let them know that I won't be ready until 10 past! It saves so much hassle!
• Television programs have got so much better too. There used to be no choice at all. Everyone would be sat at home, watching Upstairs Downstairs on the only channel available, because there was no alternative. Now we have 154 channels, some of them in languages that we understand, offering a non-stop stream of fascinating documentaries, cookery knock-out programmes, and canned-laughter comedies that would bring tears to Mona Lisa's cheeks. And yet, still, we're all glued to The Voice, or Big Brother because… er… 
• Political justice. More and more former politicians, cabinet ministers and presidents, are finding themselves where they always deserved to be: Maasiyahu Prison! And in no way does this seem to have affected the quality of our legislation (though it has brought down the quality of our prison population).
• Currency regulations have gone. Once upon a time, in defense of the shekel, so they claimed, it was forbidden for an Israeli citizen to hold foreign currency. I remember, as a tourist, I was once in Haifa, looking to exchange my pounds for shekels. I asked a kiosk owner, innocently, if he knew where I could change money. He looked left and right (just like in the films) before whispering "I'll change it for you." All very hush hush, cloak and dagger stuff. Now we can all hold as much foreign currency as we like, and if you are thinking of selling a few dollars, there's a distinguished looking gentleman, just call him Stan, who stands on the corner of Kaplan Street, Jerusalem, every morning at 9:30 who'll be willing to buy any spare dollars you have for a good price. And the shekel doesn't seem to have suffered, mate.
• Israelis are far better looking than they used to be. Astonishingly this has happened at exactly the same time as my eyesight has got worse. It must be something in the water.
• Affordable luxury. It used to be the case that only billionaires could afford the most expensive properties in Israel. But today, what with the purchase-groups, subsidies, social protest tent city domino effect, and the cottage cheese campaign, even common, or garden, millionaires can snap up a luxury apartment or two in downtown Tel Aviv. Apparently the last penthouses are on sale in the Bergen-Gandhi-Yoohu project for a little under 5 million shekels, which includes valet-bicycle parking and a whole week's supply of cottage cheese.
• Ethnic diversity and tolerance. There was once upon a time a terrible social divide between the Ashkenazim (the East European establishment of lawyers, judges and poets) and the Sephardim (the North African, swarthy, raucous no-collar workers). But today we are all one, or, in the words of Rav Mecher "We are all kitniyot eaters, now".

May you enjoy the Pesach/Easter break. Happy holidays.

Idle hands make light work

And on the first day, the Voice in the Sky said: Let there be light.

So the Israel Electric Corporation sent round a team of ten: 1 light engineer, 1 electrician, a retired switch operator, his mate, the tea boy, the trainee, the PA, a union official to check that all was ok, and two extras, as ordained by clause 4.5(1)a of the Israel Electric How to Employ Anyone Manual. And they looked and they hummed and they hahed. Or even haahed. But mostly they hummed.

Eventually the engineer wrote a detailed report and had it sent to the New Lights Division, which read it, proofed it, photocopied it, analyzed it, sat on it, chewed it, and then put it into practice.

So finally, on the 245th day, there was light.

Of course that was just my little joke. I mean, whoever heard of an IEC engineer writing a report, and having a new light installed all within 246 days?

The Israel Electric Corporation, now there’s a sly one. They’ve been very quiet recently. Why make a fuss when they seem to be getting their way without much of a struggle, and the Bolshie workers at the Israel Railways are hogging all the limelight?

But I do believe our electricity utility needs a closer examination, just for the fun of it.

Your electricity bill, my friends, is about to leap. Yes, we’ve managed to get the cost of cottage cheese down, and even cartons of milk are facing competition. But electricity? Not bloody likely. We’ll have to wait for the next revolution for that one.

Come next Sunday, my blogpals, you will see your electricity bill leap by almost 9%. Yes, 9%. Halevai we should all be enjoying 9% pay rises. Inflation is running at just over 2% (thanks Stanley) on an annual basis, so what gives the IEC, a monopoly, the right to up our prices by more than four times the inflation rate?

It’s the price of oil, moans the IEC. That’s the problem. Higher oil prices, and a supply of gas from Egypt that keeps stopping every time revolutionary bandita, Mustafa Leak, has a tantrum.

Electricity does not grow on trees, it needs to be generated from some other form of energy - wind, sun, coal, oil, gas. The IEC has a supply of gas from Egypt, but apparently that’s not to be relied on. And when the gas gets turned off, the IEC has to turn to coal (expensive and very dirty, and not found naturally in Israel) or oil (also expensive, terribly difficult to remove if you get it on your overalls, and also not found naturally in bulk in Israel).

Now the IEC can’t just up prices, like so. Any change in its tariff has first to be approved by the Nameless Inefficient Committee of Mostly Politicians or Other Obsolete Penpushers, or NINCOMPOOP for short. So, the IEC, grumbling about high costs, unreliable gas supplies etc., goes running to NINCOMPOOP, (ok, so its real name is Public Utility Authority: Electricity) claiming it needs to raise prices by 37% just to keep solvent. Well 37% is over the top, even for a statutory monopoly, so after a chop here, a back-scratch there, a fuel tax jiggle somewhere else, approval was given for an 8.9% rise this year, followed by another rise in 2013 and another in 2014.

But where’s the incentive for the IEC to trim its fat? Why doesn’t the state set a price rise for electricity at say 3% (or the rate of the inflation), and tell the company to plan ahead and think of ways to make the company more efficient, less wasteful. It can be done.

When I was working on a building site in Jerusalem many years ago, we had to call in the IEC to move an electricity pylon. About five people turned up, and while two did the job, the rest sat on the side and counted their pensions or pointed at someone who actually did something for a living and laughed.

There is talk of changes in the electricity monopoly, but you’ll find that the IEC can dig its heels in fairly firmly when it likes.

Photo: solarenergylive.com

It took them years until they agreed to what’s known as net metering. In some countries, anyone can generate their own power, typically using solar panels. Usually you end up generating more than you need (or at least, more than you need at the time, because electricity cannot be stored). So the sensible thing is... wait for it, you’ll like this... you sell your surplus electricity back to the electric company! Your electricity meter goes the other way! This is known as net metering, and only several years after it was common practice in Germany (where they don’t even get enough sun for the solar panels), the IEC is now allowing the same thing here. Reluctantly.

The IEC had also set up a secret fund to finance all their happy perks: the holiday gifts for their workers, the free electricity for employees (current and retired), that sort of thing. But this was an illegal hoard, and last week the state ordered the company to take 90% of the funds from this kitty, and put it in with all the rest of their cash. 90% of what? How much do you think the IEC - barely able to scrape by, what with the high cost of oil and gas etc. etc.- had stashed away in this fund? TWO BILLION SHEKELS.

Think of that when you get your bigger bill next month.

O Wondrous Combustion Engine, Hallowed Be Thy Name

As an elderly couple are walking along the street in Tel Aviv, they notice a parking space. The woman steps into the space, stands firmly in the center of it, spreads her arms wide, and says to her husband “Quick, Bernie, I’ve found a parking space. Go and buy a car!”

That’s a smasher, isn’t it? A classic. It cracks me up every time. And that’s just one. I’ve got loads more when they came from. (Where did it come from? It may have been from inside a Xmas cracker, or, possibly from last week’s Purim party, where the jokes flowed like cava, and the cava flowed like... Well anyway, we had so much to drink, as is traditional for the festival of Purim, that jokes like the one above seemed hilarious, and everyone looked gorgeous).

Now if you’ve finished drying your eyes after that hilarious opening, let’s take a sober look at the shortage of parking spaces in our major cities, or, as is known in municipal circles, the council’s transport policy.
What exactly is parking? (A little too philosophical for this time of morning? Possibly. In that case, skip ahead to the joke at the end). Parking is a requirement (for those with cars), an irrelevance (for those without), a waste of space (for city planners), a cost (for everyone), and a subsidy (for tax-paying non-car-owners). I was once rung up by some market surveyor, and as an introduction to several mind-numbing questions, I was told that the subject would cover “Tel Aviv’s transport and parking policy”.
But parking is not transport, and it’s not a policy. Parking is a symptom of a lack of transport alternatives. We could just as well refer to the Ministry of Health and Burial of Operation Failures.
And yet many councils around the country, still stuck in the 1950s, believe the car is the answer to everything.

Today's riddle: How many parking spaces are there at Wembley Stadium? You know, Wembley, in North London, THE premier venue for football events and rock concerts too. The newly rebuilt stadium is state-of-the art, which means each seat has plenty of leg-room and there are umpteen toilets per person, so you should never have to wait long (bearing in mind that you'll be wanting to go at exactly the same time that several thousand other football fans want to go). It is England's national stadium, and the second largest in Europe. Seating and standing together, the stadium can hold 105,000 spectators. So, back to today's riddle, how many parking spaces are there in Wembley Stadium's official car park?

Now whilst the right side of your brain is thinking that one out, let's see what Tel Aviv has recently done for its residents. To great fanfare, the council sent to me (paid for by my money) a leaflet with an achingly funny title “I came, I saw, I parked”. It lists all the latest changes that will make parking easier. I can now park in several more official car parks at night for free, and at others at a whopping 75% discount. It lists similar benefits and perks for the car-owner. If only my council spent as much time, effort, money, thought, care and loving attention on the non-car owner, on those that use alternative means of transport!
On the contrary, it is practically the aim of the council to encourage us all to have cars.
Have you heard the one about... (no, sorry, I was going to tell a joke, but it would have been quite inappropriate)... have you heard about what’s known in Hebrew as תקן חניה (teken chaniya) or “the parking standard”? Basically it’s a requirement when you plan to build a house, an office block, or whatever, that the plans must include sufficient car parking spaces. Or else you don’t get the building permit.
Who determines what is “sufficient?” Good question, my blogfans, you are on the ball this morning. Who indeed?
One friend had a house built in some small town near Jerusalem, and it included a drive with one parking space. The council rejected this. He would have to include two parking spaces to get the permit.
David Azrieli, a seasoned Canadian businessman and mall owner, designed the towers (named after him) in downtown Tel Aviv. He chose the location well, at a transport hub, on top of the Hashalom train station. The original plans included a car park with plenty of spaces. The council (an unseasoned business operator and non-mall owner) told him the car park was too small, and he had to add several hundred more spaces to get his building permit.

Room for one more? Photo: parkinglotss.com

So are you getting the picture? If the government and local authorities spent as much time, money, and thought, on public transport as they do struggling to find more car parking spaces, we could, by now, have had a public transport system comparable to the best in the world. Then maybe we could dispense with the cars, and not even need the parking.
Wembley Stadium, if you were still thinking about it, is well served by London's transport system. It is accessible from three stations, served by three Underground rail lines, two overground lines, and a national rail link. More than 7 bus routes stop in the vicinity. And which is why Wembley, the rebuilt stadium, opened in 2007, has no official car park. It is, as they say on their website, a public transport destination.