the worst part of going to Modiin Ilit is getting in and out of the city. The roads are narrow, with a lot of traffic. At night near the entrance it is pitch black (and everyone there wears black coats and hats and pants so the pedestrians are hard to see). There is only one way in and one way, the same way, out, and it is a single lane in each direction. And the city has grown tremendously - it is no longer a small town of Kiryat Sefer with a small number of private cars - Modiin Ilit is a nice sized city (population of about 75,000 residents), with lots of cars and buses. Getting in and out of the city is a nightmare.

MK Uri Maklev (UTJ) today complained to Minister of Transportation Merav Michaeli about this. He implored her to accelerate the construction of roads and interchanges into the city, a project that was started a while back but hasnt gone very far and naturally takes some times even in the best of circumstances. Maklev described how bad the traffic is coming in and out at the busy times of the day, with it taking even up to half an hour to be able to leave the city.

Minister Michaeli's response was that people should take public transportation instead of private cars and cut down on the traffic. Michaeli says that the ministry's priority is to encourage the use of public transportation over private vehicles. She says that the number of private vehicle si use in Israel has grown in recent years in an unprecedented fashion and this is because, she says, the road networks were developed tremendously but without improving the system of public transportation, so people bought cars as it became more and more convenient with the better roads and less convenient to use public transportation. The solution for Modiin Ilit, she says, is to increase the use of public transportation over private vehicles.

This is somewhat of a disconnect. People have cars and need to get places where buses dont go or need to get there in a more timely fashion than that which a bus can be relied upon. She should definitely improve the public transportation system, but plenty of people will continue using cars because public transportation cannot solve all the problems. Is Merav Michaeli encouraging the residents of Ramat Aviv to use buses more than cars? What about Herzliya or Modiin? People have cars and they are going to use them. She can make public transportation better so that in the future people will be less inclined to buy cars, but right now the public transportation is not good enough and people have cars.

Regardless of the use of public transportation vs private vehicles, Modiin Ilit needs another way in and out. Modiin Ilit is not a little gated community (though it is essentially a big one), nor is it a small moshav or yishuv. it is a city with a lot of people and even if they were to increase the number of buses, they would still need more than one entrance to the city. The need for another entrance is really separate form the use of cars and buses. Such a significantly sized city cant be locked down like that with just one way out. 

Mary Antoinette said "let them eat cake". Merav Michaeli is saying "let them use buses". this is the modern day, gluten-free, version of Let them eat cake!

how about just solve the problem

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