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Aug 11, 2021
trying to shut down Shabus
Several years ago an initiative began to operate private bus lines for free on Shabbos. It expanded fairly quickly to a number of cities - the best name was the one in Jerusalem called "Shabus". They seemed to be takin advantage of a loophole in the law prohibiting public transportation on Shabbos. Different ones operated in different ways, with some being entirely free while others functioned as a cooperative of sorts. They could not just sell tickets to passengers as that would turn them into something too similar to public transportation to be able to get away with it.
While I do not know what their status is now, as I have not heard anything about them for a while already, I figure they must still be operating because MK Moshe Abutbol (Shas) is now trying to shut them down.
According to Kol Hai News, Abutbol has petitioned the Attorney General, Avihai Mandelblit, to have him take action against these cooperatives like Shabus and Noa Tanua and shut them down.
Abutbol compares these organizations to the private mehadrin bus lines (not the bus lines Egged tried to declare as mehadrin for a period of time, but private buses) that used to operate in Haredi towns and neighborhoods trying to take advantage of the same loophole. Several years ago the Attorney General (I don't know if it was Mandelblit at the time) had those mehadrin lines all shut down as they were declared illegal. According to Abutbol these chilul shabbos buses should be the same and should be considered the same type of service lines operating without a license.
I don't know what their status actually is. Maybe they got their system in order, maybe even learning from the mehadrin line mistakes, to avoid being shut down the same way, or maybe they are operating the exact same way. I don't know. I don't even know if these shabbos bus lines have been successful - does anybody know more about their current status -are they in operation, do they carry lots of passengers, etc?
This petition is interesting to me and I look forward to seeing how this develops.
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