Plans for the construction of a new neighborhood were announced. The neighborhood would consist of 12,800 living units designated for the Haredi community, to house about 66000 people. The neighborhood will be on an area of 930 dunam and will straddle both sides of the Nehar Dan road.

The plans for this neighborhood will be brought next week to the Jerusalem Region Planning Committee for initial approvals.

There probably isnt a person in the city who has not wondered if or when they will build more housing on the open land adjacent to Nehar Dan.

Objections to the plan are being expressed already. Objections that I have seen point out that Nehar Dan was built with the explicit purpose of being a way around RBS B connecting the RBS A and C communities with the older section of Bet Shemesh, with no need to go through RBS B, thus lessening the traffic burdens of Nehar Hayarden going through RBS B. The objection is that this plan to put housing right on Nehar Dan will make Nehar Dan the busiest road in the city and bring back all that traffic and congestion.

Personally I am not convinced it will cause Nehar Dan to be overly congested. Nehar Dan is a nice large road with two lanes in each direction and perhaps/hopefully it can handle that additional traffic that will result from this construction. Perhaps Nehar Dan might need to be widened further as part of the plan adding an additionallane in each direction. Or maybe additional roads will be built as prt of the infrastructure of the new neighborhood, this splitting the additional burden among multiple roads. Probably no solutions will be offered and it will be a burden. That's usually how it works here - they push to build as much housing as possible without concern about the infrastructure to support it, and then afterwards everyone complains about the traffic or running sewage or whatever. So probably nothing will happen and it will be a burden, but perhaps someone will finally be wise enough to start planning infrastructure improvements alongside housing construction. We can be hopeful. In my opinion, that is one area where they can build housing without it creating a crazy situation of too many residents cramped into a tiny area without enough infrastructure - like the plan to add tall buildings at the corner of Hayarden-Hayarqon just under the top Neve Shamir buildings. That is insane and the infrastructure is already way overloaded and the situation will likely be horrible if that plan goes through (which it surely will because nobody cares about the residents, only about building more buildings).

Other objections are just the general objections of too many people, too much housing, leave some green areas, etc. That bothers me less. People need housing. Where I and you live was also a grassy mountain one time in the past but they built on it. As long as it doesnt create horrible dense living conditions or horrible infrastructural support, build away.

What I do find ironic, as mentioned at the beginning of this post, is the intent of Nehar Dan. In addition to the intention of relieving the traffic burden of Nehar Hayarden through RBS B, back when it was being planned in the Moshe Abutbol days there were a lot of protests on a fairly regular basis and frequently enough they would get violent. Additionally, with Nehard Hayarden being the one road going from RBS A to Bet Shemesh (other than going out to the Highway 38), residents walking through RBS B form one to the other in either direction would often find themselves under attack by the local residents. Moshe Abutbol in planning Nehar Dan, expressed explicitly that it would be a way from RBS A to Bet Shemesh (and back) without needing to go through RBS B and lessen the tensions between communities, add increased safety to the people walking, and provide general relief as a viable alternative.

While the future residents of the new neighborhood might be perfectly lovely and accepting people and nothing may change, there is also the chance of this area becoming somewhat similar to RBS B, especially as it will be very close and adjacent to RBS B, thus possibly making the road built to avoid RBS B just another road going through it with people walking there under attack from the local residents. Hopefully it will be lovely residents accepting of others who dont protest the people walking through.