Roving gangs of inspectors

A second account of the same area as an hour to Talpiot, four hours home, given later the same day.

There are a lot of buses in Jerusalem. A few years ago, I think they deregulated the market, so private bus companies sprang up.

What we have now is a phenomenon where, every time I have personally taken a bus or the light rail in the last year, I have had my ticket checked at least once, and sometimes multiple times. You have these roving gangs of inspectors.

There have been many documented cases — it has become a national media phenomenon — of inspectors intimidating people, and being really, really mean to people who have not paid accidentally. Tourists who do not speak Hebrew, whose first impression of the country ends up being yelled at by a ticket inspector.

Why it grates

As someone who does live here, and who pays, it strikes me as insanely petty.

By everyone’s account, this is a city that needs more public transport, better public transport, less crowded public transport. It is chronically overcrowded — and that is on the light rail as well, not only the buses.

And we have made the experience of using public transport almost as unpleasant as possible.

It is expensive to put on new lines and create new routes; I understand that. But why do we need to create this punitive enforcement regime to collect a fare of, say, a dollar — to fine people over maybe two dollars?

Clarified by the speaker the same day: the single fare is about ₪5.90, and you pay it per ride — so what a journey actually costs depends on whether you hold a monthly pass or are paying one-off. The dollar figures move with the exchange rate. Treat all of it as a range rather than a precise number; the disproportion is the point, not the arithmetic.

It is the most short-sighted, petty thing. It not only makes using public transport worse than it needs to be, it sends a horrible message to tourists about the kind of city Jerusalem is. It epitomises a total failure of priorities.

And it is so backwards. This is an era in which cities are trying to make public transport the norm, and some have looked at making it free. To have an aggressive enforcement regime instead is almost something from past decades.