The Marker, Osnat Nir,  Gili Melnitsky, 03.08.2021

The Ministry of Transportation and the Tel Aviv Municipality are in the final stages of agreeing on the outline of financing the relocation of the new central station in Tel Aviv. This, after the Ministry of Transportation offered the Tel Aviv municipality a solution to finance the move within two years, which the municipality had difficulty refusing : Natsva, the owner of the station and its operator, will become the third rib in the agreement to evacuate the station.

According to sources close to the negotiations, which have been intensive in recent weeks, Natsva has agreed to take on about a third of the financing costs and expenses for evacuating the station and building alternatives , with the funding for the move considered part of the municipality's entrepreneurial tasks. Natsva holds rights and will be part of the program.

From a financial point of view, there will be coordination between all parties, which will bear together an estimated costs of NIS 250-200 million. These will probably be divided equally between the Tel Aviv Municipality, the Ministry of Transportation and the army, which is owned by Kobi Maimon.

Funding for the transfer of bus operations from the station to a new transportation center until 2023, was the last rock of contention left between the municipality and the Ministry of Transportation, for the realization of agreements reached by the parties last May.

f the solution and the recognition of Natsva's evacuation operations as an "entrepreneurial task" is that Natsva will inevitably build the future project in the area it owns today, and will probably make good profits later on, since the state actually has an incentive to approve the company to establish the new venture in the field. From many building rights. The current payment is a kind of negligible "down payment" for the company, which is already anticipating future profits.

The urgency of achieving the outline stems from the state's desire to realize the state's point of departure from the contract it signed with the Natsva company - so that the bus activity will be vacated in 2023. According to the contract, the notice of evacuation of the station from bus operations must be delivered by the Ministry of Transportation to the army by the end of 2021, and if not - you can continue dragging your feet and paying the army millions of shekels a year for the station.

An actress who has become significant in the negotiations between the municipality and the Ministry of Transport is the National Economic Council, which has put pressure on the parties in recent months to reach agreements on funding.

The National Economic Council intervened in the issue about a year ago, after repeated requests from the action station to evacuate Central Station. Gadi Tunes, a social activist in South Tel Aviv who runs the "South Tel Aviv in the Crisis" Facebook group, contacted an economist at the council who examined alternative places for bus activities.

Residents of South Tel Aviv have been struggling for decades to evacuate Central Station, which they define as a "transportation disaster," largely responsible for the area's deterioration.

Huldai and Michaeli want to rake in an achievement

The leading negotiations on behalf of the Municipality of Tel Aviv city manager who talks, teaching Mayor Ron Huldai and Transportation Ministry accompanied the negotiations Jacob Netanyahu, head of the public transport. In order to advance the process required a legal opinion of the legal counsel of the Ministry Transportation and the Tel Aviv Municipality, and after questioning in principle approval of a tripartite agreement, a green light was given to formulate a first draft that would ensure the evacuation of the station by 2023.

Ron Huldai Photo: Moti Milrod

"This is a meeting of interests of Huldai and the new Minister of Transportation, Merav Michaeli, who also know how to work together, and also see the mutual political benefits that both can rake in," the source said in detail. "Huldai, who returned defeated to the local arena and wants to register a significant achievement for the residents, and on the other hand - Michaeli - who wants to prove her appointment."

In discussions held in recent months, a joint team of the Ministry of Transportation and the Tel Aviv Municipality determined the location and activity of the alternative terminals - the fighters and Panorama - in southeast Tel Aviv, near the border with Holon. The Warriors parking lot will be used for bus parking, and Panorama will provide services to passengers and bus companies. A plan will also be promoted for a small terminal under the Haganah Bridge (Deaf) - from which local lines will operate.

The Tel Aviv Municipality has agreed to create temporary plans that will enable the construction and operation of the temporary terminals, until the construction and operation of the Ben Zvi Camp is completed, also on the Tel Aviv-Holon border, within which the permanent integrated transport complex Central.

The new central station in Tel Aviv. Environmental hazard Photo: Dudu Bachar

The inter-ministerial team, which also includes representatives of the Israel Land Authority and Ayalon Highways, worked for four months to promote the alternatives so that they could be set up in a fast timeline of about two and a half years, along with diverting some lines to other terminals in the north. In February, coordination work began on the training of the Warriors parking lot (the construction of which is estimated at NIS 60 million) and the Panorama terminal (the cost of which is estimated at NIS 120 million). The fighters are to be used as a parking area for buses - and unlike previous plans, access to it will also be possible through the operational areas of the Tel Aviv Municipality, which are adjacent to the parking lot.

The Panorama parking lot will be located near Ben Zvi Road and close to the Abu Kabir Detention Center and the Institute of Forensic Medicine, and the activities of the bus companies and the Ministry of Transportation will be moved there. According to the agreements reached, the municipality will be required to issue a permit for excessive use of the urban areas as well as to act to evacuate intruders who are in the area.

The new central station in Tel Aviv is a huge, 230-dunam concrete building built on a 1,000-dunam lot, to which more than 5,500 buses enter and leave daily. Air pollution in the area of ​​the station exceeds tens of percent of the level allowed by law. A monitoring carried out by the Ministry of Environmental Protection on Lewinsky Street, where the main entrance to the station is located, found a concentration of nitrogen dioxide at a rate 30% higher than the value allowed by law.

The Tel Aviv Municipality stated: "The municipality and the Ministry of Transportation are working to advance agreements on the evacuation of the new central station. There is positive progress, but a final conclusion has not yet been decided."