Wheeling and dealing: Bicycle activism in Jerusalem

If anyone is going to make a difference to the cycling scene in Jerusalem, it is Oren Lotan. 

The thirty-something Jerusalemite may not be a born-and-bred local, but for some years now he has been resident in the city and has been doing his damnedest to make the capital more cycle-friendly. And, having recently returned to these shores after spending 17 months pedaling the highways and, especially, byways of far-flung pastures around the world, he brings plenty of vim, vigor, and vision to his new job.

Before he set off on his two-wheeler globe-trotting exploits, Lotan was highly active with the Bicycles for Jerusalem group, which started pushing the cycling ante around the city. They constantly lobbied municipal officials and invested great effort in convincing the powers that be, with their hands on the city’s purse strings, that it would be a good idea for all concerned to help cyclists get around town safely and efficiently. That is still very much Lotan’s goal.

It is all very well operating from the activist side of the scene, but as we all eventually have to accept, it is the folks with the bucks that ultimately ring the changes on the ground. Lotan has more than a working knowledge of both sides of the tracks, having made a significant contribution to Bicycles for Jerusalem’s sterling work in running bicycle maintenance workshops and other related ventures before setting off on his international trip.

He returned to Israel late last year and is now helping matters along as the projects manager for the Jerusalem Transportation Master Plan Team (JTMPT). According to its manifesto, since 1967 the JTMPT has set out “to improve the transportation in the Jerusalem metropolitan area, to encourage the city’s residents and visitors to use public transportation, and to improve the quality of life for metropolitan residents.”

Activism for cycling infrastructures in Jerusalem

Naturally, things have moved on over the past five-plus decades, and the organization’s current purview also includes working to plan and develop cycling infrastructures all over the city so that locals can stay healthy, reduce pollution, and, more often than not, arrive at their destination faster than they would if they used public transport or their own gas-guzzling vehicle.

For Lotan, environmentally friendly largely human-powered means of getting from A to B are what it is really about. But despite his unbridled enthusiasm for getting the capital in line with municipal thinking in the world’s major urban centers, such as Paris, London, Amsterdam, and Copenhagen, he does not advocate a gung-ho line of attack and end up making life increasingly more difficult for car drivers. He is, for example, particularly proud of the cycle lane that runs up Golomb Street from the intersection with Begin Boulevard up to Ramat Denia. “There used to be three car lanes, and now there are only two,” Lotan notes. “The municipality did a temporary lane and measured the difference in wait time due to the change before it implemented the full bike lane – it added up to five seconds per car.”

That is an encouraging sign that things are gradually moving in the desired direction in Jerusalem. Lotan also believes that Mayor Moshe Lion is a willing partner and supports efforts to make the city more cycle-friendly. Indeed, he has taken part in Bicycles for Jerusalem community rides designed to drum up support for the group’s efforts by demonstrating the physical presence of cyclists in town. Lion also attends periodic meetings with cycling activists at the municipality.

ROLLING OUT bicycle lanes and paths is not the be all and end all of enabling cyclists to crisscross the city without having to pedal as close as they can to the sidewalk as cars, trucks, and buses thunder by. And it is not about merely accruing impressive numbers of kilometers of asphalt routes neatly marked out with a central dotted line and bicycle signs.

The plain fact-on-the-ground matter is that we need continuity. There is very little point in, no doubt well-intentioned, municipal officials spending hundreds of thousands of shekels on paving cycle-dedicated thoroughfares if, after 300 to 400 meters, cyclists have to negotiate their way around a bus stop. If the municipality is really serious about promoting cycling commuting, it has to provide a continuous network of paths that allow Jerusalemites to hop on their two-wheelers and pedal their way to work, school, university, or the supermarket via routes that run parallel to the roads, without having to zigzag betwixt pedestrians or people waiting for buses.

“The mayor has asked where the cycle paths for commuters are,” Lotan says. Good point, but one that has yet to be taken fully on board. “There are still many neighborhoods, such as in Gilo, where they built loads of cycle paths. That is great. I don’t want to take anything away from that, but how do you get to Gilo? And how do you get to the center of town?” It’s not just about traversing longer routes in the city. “How do you get from Rehavia to the center?” Lotan wonders.

We return to the fast-growing hilltop sector in the south of the city. “There are lots of breaks in the cycle paths in Gilo because of bus bays,” says the projects manager. “That doesn’t make sense. Bus bays are needlessly adapted from intercity roads to urban streets. Bus bays in cities are mostly superfluous.”

As a keen cyclist, I can vouch for the irritation factor involved in having to dismount after just a few minutes of unimpeded progress. The impression one gets is that cyclists are still consigned to the second-class citizen category and that cycling routes are simply the end product of a desire to tick a municipal box, and the planning process cares little for cycling practicalities. 

One glaring example of below-standard execution runs along Hantke Street from the Tahon Street junction in the direction of Bayit Vagan through to the intersection with Shemaryahu Levin Street. In its wisdom at the time, the municipality laid out separate cycle paths on either side of the street that are hardly wider than the span of the handlebars. 

Thus, when presumably a different municipal department plonks a signpost close to the margins of the path or installs a sign that actually encroaches on the already narrow asphalt strip, you have to have your wits about you to avoid a painful collision. An already lamentable state of owners is further exacerbated by car owners who don’t always take pains to ensure that their vehicles aren’t intruding on the path. And if you are cycling townward from the direction of Ora Junction, you will already have had to skirt around pedestrians and bus stop lines along Henrietta Szold Street.

So we need cycle paths, and we need them to be planned with foresight and insight with regard to the way things work in the field, taking into consideration motorized and human traffic, and making every effort to allow everyone to move as freely as possible in a well-orchestrated urban dynamic.

WHILE LOTAN is a fervent advocate for upping the number of cyclists and encouraging Jerusalemites to get away from their steering wheel in favor of bicycle handlebars, he takes an all-accommodating approach to the urban traffic flow conundrum.

That includes pedestrians and Jerusalemites who use buses and the light rail. “Bus bays are not just a problem for cyclists. They make life difficult for public transport users, too. More often than not, because of cars parked in the bay or other reasons, bus drivers can’t manage to pull up close to the sidewalk, and passengers need to walk into the street; you see it all the time. It’s a real problem for elderly or disabled people.”

Lotan believes we can manage perfectly well without the bays. “The bus can stop right at the curbside. People get on and off easily, the car behind waits for five seconds, and then the bus takes off. That is not a problem.”

As frustrating as the bus bay situation is, for cyclists too, all is not lost on that score. A bus bay in Nayot, near the junction of Herzog and Zalman Shneur streets, was suitably relocated. The bay was removed, and cyclists can now enjoy a more or less uninterrupted ride from the Valley of the Cross to the Gazelle Valley. Actually, with work on the light rail extension down Herzog Street in full flow, the section near the Gazelle Valley is, at the moment, curtailed but will hopefully be restored to its former asphalt glory.

Lotan is aware that many people balk at the thought of pedaling across Jerusalem’s hilly topography as opposed to the flat terrain of Tel Aviv, which has many more cyclists and dedicated routes, but he does not believe that should be a deterrent. As many a cycling activist has pointed out, to get up the majority of inclines, all you need is lower gears. And let’s not forget the proliferation of electric bikes.

The latter, says Lotan, can be a boon or a curse. Yes, that can facilitate getting about the city with relative ease but, like anything else – and pardon the pun – you don’t want to go over the top. “If we introduce the right, standard-compliant e-bikes in significant numbers – the ones without a throttle – that can help. At the end of the day, it’s the throttle that dictates how people use e-bikes. As soon as you have a throttle, you drive like a motorized scooter. The physical effort you have to make to use a proper e-bike, without a throttle, is like walking.”

That doesn’t sound like too much trouble for the average Jerusalemite. And it offers multi-layered boons. Even with electric support, using e-bikes requires a certain amount of pedaling, so there are fitness rewards to be had. By and large, cycling is the fastest and most efficient way of maneuvering around town and, best of all, the parking headache is eradicated.

Lotan is doing his best to enlighten locals about the above. “I am organizing group rides to work,” he says. “I am aiming for organization-based rides, starting with employees of the municipality.” That makes sense. “People need to experience cycling and how easy it really is,” he adds. “We need to have rides from different neighborhoods, and not just one-time events.”

That, Lotan hopes, will introduce people to the joys and benefits of cycling. “As soon as you have someone showing you the way, you become less apprehensive. People don’t cycle for a variety of reasons. They may not have a bike. They think cycling is difficult or dangerous. We provide them with a bike [for the guided event], and they will see it really isn’t a problem. We need to remove the obstacles people have in their mind.”

Financial incentives can also be a handy way of opening people up to the idea of cycling. National, regional, and local authorities across Europe offer cycling-related tax incentives and purchase-premium plans designed to make it attractive to cycle more and drive less. Lotan is, of course, all in favor of that but says that needs to be addressed on a national rather than a municipal level.

Lotan says he is hopeful things will improve in Jerusalem. “The municipality supports the increased use of bicycles in the city, but we haven’t yet achieved the scale of infrastructure we need for that to happen. We need that to encourage people. The cycle path on Golomb Street is amazing, but it still doesn’t serve a lot of people. There’s no continuation to it.”

Cooperation, he says, is the way forward. “There has to be good communication between the [cycling] community and the municipality. We need to help each other.”■