95% of Hot's News viewers against the Agrippas bus plan
Last night, the Hot news programme started with a report about plans to put three bus routes both ways through Rehov Agrippas, the narrow but main road on the south side of the Mahane Yehuda market. In 2002, shortly after we came to the neighborhood, there was talk of a plan to run three or four infrequent bus routes west down Rehov Agrippas. But about six months ago, suddenly this became 800 buses a day, running both ways. And the buses are, we are told, in response to a survey carried out by Egged, the bus company, which showed that the residents of certain neighbourhoods refuse to change on to the light railway which will run through the centre of town (Jaffa Road) and insist on "door-to-door" service to the market. How democratic of Egged...
Gradually even our local community centre's management has come to understand that they have been stabbed in the back by the JTMT, the Jerusalem Transportation Master Plan ("Tochnit Av"). As their person responsible for "public relations" told me back in May, although they are informing all the different neighbourhoods about the plan, this is a one-way communications exercise. The fact that a plan dated 2003 has been found on the Internet showing a totally different scenario is cited as proof that "you knew about the plan all along". But nobody changed the information which was given not just to the residents, but also to the management.
Watch this space for further developments...
