As I've mentioned before, a lot of construction has been happening in our neighborhood in the last several years. Most of this has been generally positive, including the elimination of a couple of ugly, never-completed structures. However, a few weeks ago, the construction caused a serious problem.
The main access road to our part of the neighborhood was always too narrow, but one of the construction projects has now made it so dangerous that the city has closed it completely! On the satellite image below, I have shown the problem. The marker shows where our house is (although the picture was taken before it was built). I have drawn a yellow line to show our former route out of the neighborhood. Then I drew 2 short blue lines to indicate the ends of the road they closed (putting big rocks to be sure that no one can drive there!). The magenta line shows our new route, which is now the only paved road connecting us with the rest of the world!
Here are a couple of pictures on the ground. This first one shows the new wall that was built, and you can see part of the duplex that it's a wall for on the right side of the picture. The road used to go right where the car is parked! There is still room for a road between the wall and the other house's wall, but it does not line up with the lower part of the road, and the high wall creates the danger, especially for pedestrians, if the road remained open.
Here's the view from the opposite direction, looking down half of the closed segment:
Clearly, the problem is one of city planning. While this construction may have been technically legal, it certainly should never have been allowed. I don't know how the law works here, but I know that, in the U.S. (whose law is based on English common law, as is Israel's!), if an owner of a property allows the public to pass over a part of his property for a certain number of years, the passage becomes a public thoroughfare and cannot be closed to the public. This is the reason you see so many "No Trespassing" signs in the States -- it's not so much that the owner cares if you go there; he just doesn't want it to legally become a public road, and I'm pretty sure that he could use the presence of the signs to prove that he did NOT actually ALLOW the public to go there.
A couple of days ago, we received a letter in our mailbox from the city that had no addressee listed on it. I suspected that this meant that it was a general letter to all residents of the area, and, indeed, that's what it was. Here's the letter, which I scanned in:
I'm not sure if this will work, but you may be able to click on it to see an enlarged version, which should then be legible -- well, at least if you read Hebrew. Since most of you probably DON'T read that much Hebrew, here's my translation (with my sometimes snide comments enclosed in square brackets):
To All Residents of the Neve Oranim Neighborhood
In the course of the last year, a period of accelerated construction has begun throughout the neighborhood, and as a result many residents have exercised their property rights [Hmmmm... apparently including the right to cause the closure of our main access road!]. On 4 April we arranged a comprehensive working tour throughout the neighborhood with all the professional municipal staff in order to join you in solving the problems that have arisen as a result:
1. The road connecting parts of the neighborhood [Well, at least they know what the NUMBER ONE problem is!]
• Close to the connecting road [well actually ACROSS most of the road itself!], construction was carried out, in accordance with the law [notice how they made sure to mention this], as a result of which the road became very dangerous, and therefore a directive was received [from whom? obviously no one wants to take responsibility for this!] to close it immediately at both ends.
• The city engineer, with approval from the Office of Transportation, is checking into the possibility of a temporary solution of making this a one-way street [NOT a good solution, and why would it be temporary, anyway?!?]. However, until a decision is received from the Office of Transportation, the street will remain closed in both directions for reasons of safety and mortal danger.
• The municipality of Tzfat has already been awarded 2.5 million shekels (about $660,000) from the Office of Transportation for planning and implementation of the main streets and sidewalks [it doesn't say WHAT they will be planning and implementing!] in the neighborhood, and we are working to proceed quickly ["quickly" is a relative term in Israel!].
2. Street lighting
• During 2010 we will be investing in the construction of a regional electrical center [this probably means a new substation, I assume], and at the appropriate time we will connect the northern part of the neighborhood to the electrical system [I think they mean only the street lights here -- all of us are ALREADY connected to the electrical system! But this is NOT good news! We really don't WANT our street lights anyway! We like seeing the stars at night. Besides, all this electrical work is probably going to cause power outrages, especially on days when I have lots of students -- this one could costs me big time!].
3. Street signage
• In the next few months, we will be preparing new signs [of course they're NEW -- we don't currently have ANY street signs at all!] with names of the streets in the neighborhood plus house numbering. [This, finally, is really GOOD news!]
4. Municipal supervision
• All contractors building throughout the neighborhood have received directions regarding cleanliness and order on building sites, and any damage to the infrastructure of the neighborhood will be repaired by the end of the work. Any contractor violating these directions will be fined in accordance with the law. [Hmmm... will this be more than a small fine that amounts to nothing but a gentle slap on the wrists?]
We in the Municipality of Tzfat understand the daily difficulties that residents of the neighborhood are currently experiencing, and we are working with maximum speed to finish the planning processes and solutions listed above.
In the near future, we will arrange a general meeting of the residents of the neighborhood in which we will give details and present the additional plans of the municipality for the neighborhood. Thank you for your patience, and we apologize for the disappointment.
With blessings,
Ilan Shochat
Mayor
So, there you have it. In exchange for really botching the planning of access to the neighborhood, they are going to make some as yet unspecified improvements and they're going to finally put up street signs. Why am I not impressed?
However, in the above picture, you can't quite see the west end of the bridge. In the next picture, you can see why it's not possible to drive across this bridge:
The west approach has been washed out by the river. Nevertheless, it was easy for me to WALK onto the bridge. Here's the view from about the middle of the bridge, looking downstream (south):
And here's the view from the same spot, looking upstream (north):
Though it may now be so clear from these pictures, there's really quite a lot of water flowing in the river, especially for nearly the end of May.
