Obstructing Ambulances as they save people's lives

Today the municipality roped off and marked an entirely new section of Churchill Boulevard for the construction of its ill-concieved and poorly planned bike path project. This was done in spite of persistent protests on the part of the Hebrew University and Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus, as well such groups as "North Jerusalem Residents for Safety and Quality of Life".

Bike paths had recently been constructed on the upper portion of Churchill Boulevard that stretches between the Hospital and University. There, it has become very apparent that the narrowing of the streets that the project has entailed has caused severe traffic problems for passing vehicles, especially buses and trucks, while the bike paths themselves are infrequently used due to their poor and dangerous design. The width of the driving lanes was sacrificed for these bike paths which meant that no buffer zone was left at all between parked cars and passing traffic. As such, a single car that opens its door or bus that lets off passengers brings the entire street to a stand still. At the same time people exiting parked cars are endangered as they now must step out into moving traffic or the trench-like bike paths.

These same problems are now being extended down the hill to the section of Churchill Boulevard that acts as the main artery for the Hospital. While the problems created on the upper section of the road were sufficiently deplorable, they will be even more hazardous in this new section. This is due to the fact that this section is the main means of access to the Hospital. First and foremost, ambulances traverse this stretch of road. They must frequently race to or from the hospital in order to save a person's life. The traffic obstructions that this project creates will rob them of precious time needed to prevent deaths. The municipality knows that their work will cause problems for the ambulance drivers. However their response was that the ambulances will simply have to drive with a set of wheels on the shrubbery-filled traffic islands running down the center of the street. On top of that, this section of Churchill Boulevard provides the primary parking for visitors to the hospital, among them the infirm and sick, who will be forced to step out into passing traffic in order to receive their medical treatment.

This is the situation in the upper section of Churchill Boulevard and will be the same in the lower section where ambulances need to rush to and from the hospital to save lives.

An ambulance on its way to the hospital on Churchill Boulevard. The municipality feels that it is perfectly acceptable to force ambulances such as this to drive in the shrubbery as they race to and from the hospital to save lives.

The Bike Lane Project is Illegal - No building permit and no תב''ע

The 'North Jerusalem Residents for Safety and Quality of Life' Amuta found, through the help of their lawyer, that the dangerous Bike Path Project of the Jerusalem Municipality that has already caused a number of accidents and injuries, is being carried out without legal authorization. When asked, the Municipality confessed that the project does not, in fact, have a building permit. On top of that, the changes required by the Ministry of Transportation and the Laws of the State of Israel were not introduced to the תב''ע (Town Planning Scheme). Bike Paths are a new concept in Israeli transportation and constitute a 'substantial deviation from the planning scheme'. Such substantial change requires an emendation of the תב''ע (which is the legal plan that regulates the usage of land including streets) before being implemented.

The Municipality tried to defend the illegal execution of the project by claiming that it was a merely a 'Traffic Arrangement'. However, as was clarified in the Danziger Ruling in the High Courts about a week ago, a 'Traffic Arrangement' is used to solve a traffic problem in a specific location, and cannot be used to introduce a substantial change in the scheme of roads and streets. The Bike Path Project is a pilot program that is attempting to completely change the nature of the roads and therefore needs its principles to first be introduced to the תב''ע.

If there is no building permit, תב''ע or 'traffic arrangement', what is there? Unfortunately we have been left with a "Chelm" Plan that has not passed the legal procedures that would have prevented such a project from threatening the public safety.

It has come to our attention that on Sunday the illegal construction work will resume in the streets of French Hill. Stay posted to this blog to find out how you can help stop this disaster.