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NEW! From
The Button Men
DAVID BIBER
541-4133 s (810) 656-9500 Crestview Cadillac
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INVESTMENTS SINCE 1887
BOB MORIAN
(313) 336-9200 1-800-365-9200
perky, executive yuppie
with slicked-back hair
leaves his gleaming house
in the suburbs, waves
goodbye to his family, and hops
into his car to head to work.
So far, so good. But soon, his
Israeli dream turns into a night-
mare. Caught in an endless
stream of traffic, he starts to
sweat; his hair is mussed; he is
late for his meeting. He grabs his
cellular phone and starts apolo-
gizing. Once he arrives at his
destination, he learns that oth-
er important executives are sit-
ting in traffic. "Darn," he mutters
to his assistant. "And I was the
one who supported putting this
factory in Kiryat Gat."
Thus opens the promotional
film created by the Trans-Israel
Highway Corporation.
Presumably, once their
planned highway crosses the
country to link Rosh Pina with
Beersheba, our yuppie hero will
be able to saunter out of his
house in Lower Galilee, jump
onto a section of the 190-mile,
multi-lane highway, and quick-
ly reach his destination in time
for his meeting. The Trans-Israel
Highway, they proinise, will al-
low Israel to spread out in spa-
cious suburbs further north,
further south and further east
than today, and still work in
greater Tel Aviv.
The state company is taking
one of the most important steps
towards realizing this dream.
The initial selection tender for
the building of the first 60-mile
section of the highway — stretch-
ing approximately between
Hadera in the north and Gedera
in the south — will be published.
The short list for the license is
expected to be ready in May,
with the final tender offered in
June and the beginning of nego-
tiations scheduled soon.
Never before has there been
an engineering investment on
such a scale in Israel.
The company estimates that
building the first section of the
road, including its eight to 10 in-
terchanges, will cost $700 mil-
lion, an amount the bidders will
presumably earn back in tolls
from the estimated 120,000 dai-
ly vehicle trips (by 2010) that will
take place on the road.
Putting such a major enter-
prise in private hands is complex.
Picking the winning bidder will
take the Trans-Israel Highway
company through the end of
1996. The paving itself, there-
fore, will only begin five years af-
ter the government declared the
road a national priority. But the
company chairman, former chief
of staff Moshe Levy, is convinced
the company had no other way
to plan the construction. And a
private toll road, at least in the
beginning, may be the only way
to create the road at all.
"We face a dilemma," he says.
"If we were to plunge into the
project without a tender it might
not have been built. You can nev-
er count on a state budget over
the long term. One year it might
be fine, but no one knows what
will happen the next year. Some-
one can suddenly tell you to wait
and you get stuck."
To save time, the company is
already building one intersection
for the highway, at Ben Shemen,
not far from Ben Gurion Airport,
and will begin soon the con-
struction of a second one, at the
Kessem interchange, next to
Rosh Ha'ayin. At the same time,
archaeological teams from the
Antiquities Authority are comb-
ing the length of the road, exca-
vating to make sure the way is
clear for the first section of the
road. And other workers are
moving-pipes, electric lines, and
sewer tunnels out of the road's
path.
In the meantime, the compa-
ny will work on getting the ap-
proval of the National Planning
Council for the northern and
southern stretches of the road.
At the company, the need for
such a road is a given. Its officials
happily provide numbers: In <
1972, there were 200,000 cars on
the road in Israel; in 1992, there
were 1.2 million; and by the year
2000, it is predicted there will be
2 million. The trend is likely to
further accelerate. Today, the cit-
izen-to-car ratio in Israel is only
half of Europe's and a third of the
United States.
The high vehicle density on ex-
isting roads, the company says,
is the cause of many accidents;
decreasing congestion by spread-
ing out the population will help.
Hence, the Trans-Israel High-
way. The road, they say, will
save the economy time, fuel,
spare parts and work hours as
well as tens of millions of com-
muting hours.
The road was conceived well
before the the planning of the Is-
rael Defense Forces's withdraw-
al from Palestinian towns like
Tulkarm and Kalkilya, which the
Trans-Israel Highway will skirt.
Will a vital artery's location so
close to the Palestinian Authori-
ty constitute a security risk? Mr.
Levy dismisses such a concept.