Bad for Beit Safafa, Good for Gilo? Extending Jerusalem's Menachem Begin Expressway Southward

The planned Menachem Begin Expressway South extension -- simulation (J'lm Municipality)

One of the most curious aspects of the Begin Expressway extension story is the absence of any comprehensive, city-wide angle on it.

When work started a few months back on the extension -- which is meant to provide the motorists of Jerusalem's southern neighborhoods and suburbs with direct access to the city's celebrated traffic artery -- a certain amount of media attention was generated; but that attention was entirely political in nature. Articles in Haaretz and elsewhere described an outrageous plan to run a multi-lane highway through the tranquil and picturesque village of Beit Safafa -- an Arab enclave in an otherwise Jewish-populated part of Jerusalem -- thereby slicing it in half and irreparably damaging the fabric of life there.

The issue, to the limited extent that the media have addressed it, has been given an exclusively sectoral spin. It has been framed as an evil Israeli plot to enable “settlers from Gush Etzion […] to drive to Jerusalem’s center or Tel Aviv without stopping at a single traffic light” -- at the expense of Beit Safafa's residents, who have been depicted  as easy targets for abuse by the Jerusalem Municipality due to their minority status. The residents, of course, mounted a protest which has been rejected by the Jerusalem District Court; they will soon be taking their appeal to the Supreme Court.

Highway revolts are nothing new, either abroad or in Israel, and in Israel it would be ridiculous to claim that they are restricted to the Arab population. I therefore find it astonishing that the Begin extension is being represented as an "Arab-Israeli" issue, rather than an urbanist one. While I sympathize with the Beit Safafa residents, I'm not at all sure that the matter at hand is one of ethnic discrimination. The Beit Safafa residents' claim that the city "has proceeded with work without carrying out a detailed plan for the segment of the expressway through the neighborhood, as required by law, and without allowing residents to file objections," sounds suspiciously like the argument mounted in 2010 by Jewish residents of Elmaliach Street in Katamonim Tet, when work preparatory to the Begin extension was launched without the residents having "received all of the material [and] documents necessary for them to properly formulate their objections."

In general, if one looks at things from a car-versus-human standpoint, one could easily argue that the Jerusalem Municipality treats Jewish neighborhoods no better than it does Arab ones. The Beit Safafa residents are justifiably upset that, due to the highway being build in their midst, their small children will now have to walk farther and cross a bridge in order to get to their nursery school. However, this is no different from the situation that currently exists in the Jewish neighborhood of Gilo (the Begin extension's planned termination point). Gilo's community council has proposed that footbridges (or even underpasses!) be erected across the neighborhood's dangerous main roads (see below), so that residents -- and especially children -- can get to schools and other public facilities without risking their lives.

It's not that the Jerusalem Municipality wants to torment and abuse its Jewish and Arab residents; it simply doesn't perceive that there is anything wrong with the car-oriented policies that shape development in the city's less central neighborhoods. Indeed it thinks of walkable urbanism as a city-center thing, as something to showcase in the Jaffa Road display window. The Municipality has jumped enthusiastically onto the creative class bandwagon and is actively striving to transform Jerusalem's "historic downtown" into a paradise of placemaking and urban amenity (that this effort is being paradoxically expended on a part of town that was walkable and attractive to begin with has not gone unnoticed). The idea is to attract tourists and hipsters who, it is assumed, will spend a lot of money and generate a trickle-down effect on the city's economy. The city's working-class outer neighborhoods, by contrast, are being left in their original state of car-dependent sprawl. While Beit Safafa is paying one sort of price for the prevailing urban policy, in the form of a multi-lane expressway that will slash through an area that is still human-scaled and walkable, neighborhoods like Gilo and Ramot have long been paying a different kind of price. They came "pre-slashed."

Gilo's highways

Since it's being claimed that the Jewish neighborhood of Gilo, at Jerusalem's southern edge, is going to benefit from the Begin extension at Beit Safafa's expense, it might be worth looking at Gilo's true current status. Is Gilo a pleasant, pedestrian-friendly place for which direct entry to Begin will be a harmless added perk?

Not exactly. In fact, it already suffers from the highway slash-through syndrome that Beit Safafa residents are seeking to avoid, and its symptoms will likely increase in severity once the Begin extension is added to the mix.

Gilo's unfriendly main street (HaGanenet segment)

Gilo is already bisected to some degree from north to south by Dov Yosef Road, and from east to west by another long road whose various segments are named HaRosmarin, HaGanenet and Tsviya-VeYitzhak. These roads are, in essence, highways, not neighborhood main streets or boulevards. Dov Yosef Road does not pretend to be anything other than a traffic artery connecting Gilo with the Malha Mall and the current Begin entry point at Golomb Street. By contrast, there is both residential construction and commercial activity along HaRosmarin, HaGanenet and Tsviya-VeYitzhak; however, these east-west roads (which, depending on the topography, either border a wadi or slice through built-up areas) are exceedingly wide, and range from four to six lanes with formidable dividers extending along much of them. Their main purpose is not to concentrate commercial or social activity within the neighborhood, but to channel automobile traffic to and from Dov Yosef Road and the Derech Hevron traffic artery to Gilo's east.

Gilo's main shopping complex is situated at the intersection of Tsviya-VeYitzhak and Leshem, and consists of a tiered outdoor center that is an accessibility nightmare and an adjacent indoor mall that cannot be reached safely by pedestrians.

Gilo central shopping complex

The complex's unfriendly design, unwalkable location, and proximity to the much larger Malha Mall, which most Gilo residents are able to reach within minutes by car, have been deadly to business; most of the Gilo Mall storefronts have lain empty for years. Zeidenberg Park, whose entry point lies diagonally across the road from the shopping center, represents a major investment in terms of play equipment and landscaping; but its location deep in a wadi and consequent invisibility at street level, as well as the multi-lane road that divides it from the shopping area, preclude any meaningful interaction between the sites. Gilo's community center, pool and library are nowhere nearby, having been situated in a strictly-residential enclave at the eastern end of the neighborhood; most residents, one may assume, access these amenities via private car, just as they would travel by car to amenities outside the neighborhood.Where a more human-scaled main street might have concentrated local commercial and social activity in a lively and effective way, an internal highway and car-oriented planning have separated the existing resources and made synergy between them impossible.

Gilo is not the only Jewish Jerusalem neighborhood to be divided by a highway; Ramot, at the city's northern end, is similarly bisected by Golda Meir Boulevard, and similarly characterized by a pedestrian-hostile distribution of local amenities. That is how these neighborhoods were planned. The assumption was that everyone would have cars, and use them not only to get to their jobs in other parts of town, but for most local errands as well.

Having established that the practice of running highways through Jerusalem neighborhoods is rooted less in discriminatory tendencies than in an auto-centric planning orientation, we are now free to look at the Begin extension, and its potential impact, from a broader perspective, one that encompasses not only Beit Safafa but the extension's supposed "beneficiary" neighborhoods, as well.

Will the Begin extension enhance the livability of Gilo, and of the other south Jerusalem neighborhoods and suburbs that it is meant to serve?

The Begin extension will terminate in Gilo, by the Tunnel Road interchange through which Gush Etzion motorists enter and exit the city. Gilo's community council is gushing about the extension's potential benefit to the neighborhood, in the form of "quick access" to "Jerusalem." I'm not sure, though, that Gilo residents currently feel cut off from "Jerusalem." As noted above, they already have quick access to the Malha Mall via Dov Yosef Road, the expeditious, if perilous, thoroughfare that actually brings them most of the way to their current Begin Expressway entry point at Golomb St. They are also quite close to the Talpiot Industrial Area, via Derech Hevron. When I recently stopped by the Gilo Mall in search of a new pencil case for my son and left empty-handed because the toy-and-school-supplies store (one of the few that I remembered as still being operational) had closed down, I was able to get to Talpiot by car in just a few minutes' time to continue my quest.





Poor pedestrian access and too close to Malha: empty storefronts in the Gilo Mall

  Gilo has a negative image. It is not thought of as a potential destination for the younger, educated people who have been organizing in Jerusalem in recent years under the Hitorerut BiYerushalayim and Ruah Hadasha rubrics, despite the fact that housing there is relatively affordable and access to the commercial and recreational hubs of Malha, Talpiot and Emek Refaim is convenient (a comparative advantage over such farther-flung northern Jerusalem neighborhoods as Ramot and Pisgat Zeev). The problem appears to lie with Gilo's inferior urban qualities -- its walkability deficit, lack of local shopping, inaccessible public amenities, etc.

These problems are ostensibly being addressed by Gilo's master plan project; yet the material that has coalesced up to now seems curiously shallow and unconvincing. One gains insight into the Gilo plan when one looks at the position papers that serve as background it, and which were drawn up with "resident involvement." These papers talk about remodeling and invigorating the main shopping area, densifying the neighborhood, improving walkability and public transit, improving linkage to the rest of the city, creating local jobs, and all sorts of things that are usually associated with good urbanism.

However, the most emotionally charged sections of the position papers are those that deal with roads and with parking. The sense of Gilo residents' preoccupation with where they are going to put their cars, with maintaining traffic flows and not being caught in traffic jams, is palpable, and is reflected on a practical level in the demand for added roads, road widenings, more extensive parking areas around the commercial centers and neighborhood amenities (including parks), and parking minimums of 2 spaces per unit in all new residential construction. The position papers note, matter-of-factly and neutrally, that Gilo is a "bedroom community," and that most residents get around by car, even within the neighborhood; these facts are presented as a status quo that is not up for negotiation. That the neighborhood's auto-oriented scale might be the root cause of its unattractiveness to the younger generation is an idea that appears not to have been entertained.

Under these circumstances one is tempted to ask, Shouldn't Gilo residents be given what they want? If they want more and wider roads and more places to store automobiles, shouldn't they get them? And if they want immediate entrance to the city's north-south automobile artery, why not provide it? They have been conditioned to depend on their cars, why try to change things?

But surely the counter-questions also need to be asked. Having already mentioned Gilo's stillborn shopping district and pedestrian-hostile main street, let's consider whether the extension is likely improve the status of either. Will encouraging Gilo residents (and the residents of nearby Har Homa and Gush Etzion) to use their private cars to travel, via Begin, to jobs, shopping and recreational facilities at the opposite end of town (in addition to relatively nearby Malha) have a beneficial effect on local businesses? A successful shopping area might conceivably be developed on HaRosmarin St., near the Trampiada/Tunnel Road entrance, to serve both the residents of that part of Gilo and those of Gush Etzion who pass through Gilo on their way to and from downtown Jerusalem (just as the Moshe Dayan Blvd. shopping complex successfully serves Mateh Binyamin and Neve Yaacov residents who pass through Pisgat Zeev). Will the direct link to Begin and consequent complete bypass of Gilo itself facilitate or hinder such commercial development in eastern Gilo? Will it do anything for Gilo's moribund existing shopping center? Will the perceived necessity of providing smooth access to Begin from within the neighborhood make a narrowing of Gilo's main east-west roads -- so desirable for walkability reasons -- at all a realistic prospect?

If efforts to improve public transit to and from Gilo are ever indeed undertaken (Mayor Nir Barkat's re-election platform claims that a "Blue Line" from Gilo to Ramot via the city center will be advanced during his next term), will they have any chance for success, given the Begin extension's implied encouragement of private car use?

All of these questions apply, in varying degrees, to Har Homa, the future Givat Hamatos neighborhood (wedged between Beit Safafa and Gilo), and the Gush Etzion suburbs. Will easier and closer access to Begin have a positive effect on commercial development in these areas? Will it encourage people to switch from private car to public transit? Will it foster good urbanism in these areas? Will it make them more desirable to a younger, less car-oriented generation?

In my next post, I hope to raise some additional questions regarding the Begin Expressway extension -- questions relating to the extension's impact on other parts of Jerusalem.

Summertime, libraries, Brooklyn, Jerusalem

It's mid-August. The kids' summer camps have long since ended. Every day is an exercise in parental ingenuity: how to keep the children occupied in a positive way. How to keep eyes off screens, grubby little fingers off keyboards.

Outdoor excursions are important in summer, at least to our family. But reading is also an activity that -- in the mind of yours truly, a former librarian -- is strongly associated with summer vacations. August, as I remember it from childhood, is public-library prime-time.

Granted, the Brooklyn of my formative years was a public-library-goer's utopia. Perhaps I was spoiled -- though I do recall a certain famous NYC fiscal crisis of the mid-1970s ("Ford to City: Drop D--d") in which public library hours were curtailed. But that didn't leave much of an impression.

Israel has never developed the kind of public-library culture that exists in the US. The municipal library systems here vary greatly in caliber from locality to locality, and there are no professional organizations with sufficient clout to set and enforce standards. I'm not sure why the Israeli public-library sphere has evolved so little over the years. Books certainly are expensive here -- like everything else; how Israelis have managed to obtain reading material all these decades in the absence of quality public libraries, I cannot imagine. (But then I have trouble understanding how they can afford expensive new cars, trips abroad, etc., on their Israeli salaries.)

It's worth pointing out that a neighborhood branch of a municipal public library system doesn't have to be anything grandiose. Some of my fondest Brooklyn-childhood memories are of a modest storefront library that was located around the corner from our home on East 58 St. I was sorry when it later moved a few blocks away to a new, larger building at a busy commercial intersection. The storefront library had perfectly complemented the sleepy little strip of shops around the corner from us on Ave. T: the old-style luncheonette with the swivel stools; the cool, dim grocery with its fascinating stacks of canned goods -- themselves like bookshelves in a way; the perfumey drugstore with its aisles of greeting-cards; the Chinese laundry with the honest-to-goodness Chinese family living in its back room.

The little library nestled among these stores might not have served the adults of the neighborhood very well, but from a child's perspective, it was "right-sized."

Nostalgia aside, it is worth noting that, even before a proper, dedicated library building was built to serve this part of southeast Brooklyn, the municipal library system recognized the need to provide services to the local taxpaying population. In the absence of a building, the municipality rented a store and set up a library in it, with regular opening hours. Not too difficult, right?

The Jerusalem municipality was capable, in the past, of coming up with solutions of this kind, in order to serve residents in newer neighborhoods where library buildings had yet to be built. If I'm not mistaken, both central and eastern Pisgat Ze'ev had public library branches operating on the premises of local schools, within a reasonable time frame after these areas became populated. Nothing fancy, for sure. But serviceable. Normal, convenient opening hours. Someplace to take your kids for an hour or two on a hot summer afternoon. Someplace to read a magazine, get some books.

Something happened during the Lupolianski mayoral administration. Suddenly, it became okay to disenfranchise taxpaying Jerusalemites -- to penalize them for deciding to live in the city's newer neighborhoods. Suddenly, the lack of a library building became a good excuse for simply neglecting to provide library services. Send the bookmobile in there 2-3 times a week for an hour. That'll do.

Below is the site where a public library is slated for construction, in the neighborhood of Jerusalem where I live -- Har Homa:



Plans for this site also include kindergarten buildings and a small synagogue (the neighborhood is in a perpetual state of crisis regarding both kindergarten and shul space).

The photo above was taken about half a year ago. The work has not advanced appreciably since then.

In lieu of a real library, our neighborhood's children have been served for nearly a decade now by this rather forbidding specimen of a mobile library:



For years I and my family snubbed the bookmobile. I had a "Mom-mobile" at my disposal and Baka wasn't too far away; we could get there on a weekly basis in summer, and perhaps once every six weeks during the school year. Not ideal -- certainly not walkable -- but it seemed pleasanter and more civilized to patronize a real (albeit modest) library every few weeks than to climb into that unventilated and unappealing little truck -- like a furnace in summer, and (so my kids claimed) reeking of cigarette smoke.

Then, a couple of summers ago, the arrival of a new baby made the trip to the Baka library less practicable. I went through the mobile library's irritating subscription process (writing out half a dozen deposit checks for a hundred shekels each, so my 3 older kids could each take out two books at a time). Of course I hardly expected the Jerusalem mobile library's circulation system to be integrated with that of the city's public library system as a whole -- seeing that the neighborhood branches themselves are not integrated as a Westerner would expect them to be: instead of having a library card that serves you at all municipal branches, you have to take out a subscription at each and every branch that you want to patronize, going through the annoying deposit-check process every single time.

So we subscribed, my kids used the mobile library a few times that summer ... then stopped once school started up again.

The mobile library comes to Har Homa only 3 times a week, for an hour or, at best, an hour and a half at a time -- somewhere between 3:30 and 5:30 pm. What this means is that a child who goes to school outside of the neighborhood (a large proportion of Har Homa's children fall into that category) and comes home at around 4:00 pm, has little chance of making it to the mobile library, after unpacking his/her day for Ima and grabbing a bite to eat. What is more, many organized after-school activities, such as martial arts or music lessons, conflict with these miserly mobile-library hours.

As things worked out, my kids were unable to make use of the Jerusalem mobile library during its operating hours in Har Homa.

What is needed, clearly, is a local library that offers services during the normal range of hours for a Jerusalem branch -- from 2:00 pm to 7:00 pm, 4 or 5 afternoons a week. Whether that library is operated out of a storefront rented by the municipality, or in a caravan planted in one of the schoolyards -- that's for the iriya to decide.

Har Homa, for those not aware of the local demographic situation, is overwhelmingly a neighborhood of families with young children. Basically, an entire generation of children has been growing up here without library services worthy of the name. Nine years is an awfully long time for the "new neighborhood" excuse to be employed. And library service is hardly the only sphere in which that excuse is being employed.

Not that things are altogether rosy in Baka. To get to my summer 2011 library saga: I decided to try the mobile library again this year. Not out of any enthusiasm, but because I found out that the Baka library would be closing for two whole weeks during August.

Based on previous years' experience I had been expecting the library to close for one week, when the community center that houses it shuts down for "concentrated" staff vacations. One August day a few years ago I arrived in Baka with my kids expecting to pass a couple of pleasant hours in the library, only to find, along with other families that had come for the same purpose, that the library was closed for the week -- nobody had bothered to post notices beforehand. When I inquired afterward why the library had shut down for a week during the month when it was probably most needed, the librarian told me that it is unsafe to keep the library open while the community center itself is closed.

That, unfortunately, sounds like a typical Jerusalem Municipality solution -- rather than getting a security guard to stand at the entrance to the community center so the library can stay open during peak season, they just cancel services for the duration (ditto for several other Jerusalem public libraries housed within community centers).

A public library branch, even a small and poorly-equipped one, represents a considerable investment of public resources. Isn't it a horrible waste of resources for a library to shut down for even one week -- let alone two -- during the summer vacation?

In despair, I decided to try again with the mobile library. However, I had misplaced the sheet I once had detailing the bookmobile hours. I spent quite a while online trying to find the information, ultimately reaching this page which lists bookmobile hours for other neighborhoods, but makes no mention of Har Homa. The mobile library does not appear on the list of Jerusalem public libraries provided at the municipality website.

Okay, I could just have picked up the phone to the main branch at Beit Ha'Am and asked. But as it happened, the bookmobile was there one afternoon while I and a couple of my kids were walking down the street. So we climbed on in. My kids chose a few books for themselves; but when we tried to check them out, the librarian was unable to locate any record of our subscription. It's all hard-copy, you see. The index card had been lost.

I didn't have any checks on me and couldn't re-subscribe. So we left the books behind and went home. A few days later, we subscribed at the Gilo library branch (which has its own building, so it doesn't close during August). I hadn't thought of it as an option before, as I had understood the English children's book collection there to be quite minimal compared with Baka's and it's important to me that my kids read in both of their languages ... but in the end it was fine. My oldest found a Hardy Boys book that he had never read before, the staff displayed a heroic degree of understanding when my toddler threw a tantrum over a sippy cup that didn't belong to her, and we were able to combine the library visit with a trip to the Gilo pool next door. My only gripe: having to haul a stroller up a flight of stairs to get to the library, which was built in the days before anyone thought of access. A person who gets around in a wheelchair could not make use of the facility (and I gather that this is the case at other Jerusalem branches as well).