A number of cities around Israel, including Bet Shemesh, went to the Supreme Court today with a lawsuit regarding the poor bus services provided in these cities, saying the people are being held hostage by the shortage of buses and the poor service provided. The petition to the court was accompanied by the mayor, Dr Aliza Bloch, and by support and assistants of MKs.

I know how bad the service is. Buses that don't come on time. buses that just don't come at all. Lousy schedules. Neighborhoods that only have buses that make extremely circuitous routes through the city, making a potentially short trip take a very long time. Overfilled buses, especially with school children. And more.

And the funny thing is that in Bet Shemesh the bus system is so much better than it used to be. And it is still lousy. I remember the days when the only local bus was pretty much the #14 and that took ages to wind its way through every single neighborhood of the city. Today there are so many more bus lines and so many more buses running on each line, and it still is not even close to adequate in supplying the needs of the city residents.

Now I am really not sure what the court is going to do, or is expected to do. Are they going to order the State to supply more buses? What is the role of the court in such an issue?

the bus companies cannot make any changes to their schedules, add or subtract buses or bus lines, without the approval of the Transportation Ministry. These are coalition MKs supporting the petition, so I am not sure why they have just not pushed the Ministry of Transportation, held by them for ten years now, to increase the number of buses and bus lines or do whatever is necessary to solve the problems in these various cities. They are petitioning the courts against themselves? They want the courts to force the coalition they sit in to improve the situation - why not just do it without the courts? I am not really sure how this works and what they are doing and what they expect to happen here.