Bethel Finance: Railways defends Sunday buses for soldiers

Bethel Finance news:
The only way to provide reasonable service for soldiers and passengers on trains is for buses to carry the soldiers, Israel Railways chairman Uri Yogev said at press conference today to mark the Railway's new policy of not carrying IDF soldiers for free. The new policy aims to reduce the overcrowding of trains on Sunday mornings due to thousands of soldiers returning to their bases after a weekend at home.

"As CEO of Israel Railways, as a father of a soldier and a reservist, I am proud that this morning we didn’t see soldiers sprawled on the floors of carriages, in the toilets, or on their kitbags, which was very unbecoming," said Israel Railways CEO Boaz Tzafrir. "They deserve the service of being carried on spacious buses."

This morning, Israel Railways organized 263 buses to carry 10,000 soldiers from Haifa, the Krayot, Nahariya, and Galilee towns to the Glilot IDF Base outside Tel Aviv and the Natan base outside Beersheva. The Ministry of Finance paid for the buses on the understanding that this would create room for paying civilian passengers on the trains.

Tzafrir said that, in future, Israel Railways would consider expanding the bus service to other regions, and not just in the north. He said that the proportion of trains arriving on time on Sunday morning rose from 60-70% to almost 90%. He added that the number of train seats would be increased by 20,000 this year. "We will review demand for carrying soldiers once a week in order to estimate how many buses we will make available. I assume that this network will operate for a long time," he said.

Yogev said, "Only a few hundred soldiers paid full fares out of tens of thousands of passengers, and I am sure that the numbers will fall when they see that the alternative service is just as good. The initiative was ours, based on our responsibility to the quality of service, and even passenger safety. We received strong support from the Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Transport. The IDF has agreed to the measure. It's not about money, but necessity.

"Israel's soldiers are important customers for the Railways, and will continue to be so. We hope that we'll be able to provide a very good level of service for everyone, and that the very bad service on Sunday mornings will not be repeated."

Yogev said that increasing the number of train carriages would not have solved the problem, because it was unique to Israel, where a large number of soldiers packed the trains for a couple of hours on Sunday morning. "Even if were to increase the number of carriages, there would still be a problem, due to the extreme over-demand on Sunday morning," he said, adding that the problem would only be solved when a fourth track was laid along the Ayalon in Tel Aviv in ten years or so.