Tel Aviv may be somewhat small, but it has some great and unique public transit. The most ubiquitous way to get around is by bus.
As in the States, the bus has a number and a corresponding route. You pay when you get on, and the bus is signaled to make its next scheduled stop by pressing a button onboard. Most people pay with a transit card; I pay with shekels. Busses do not operate on Saturdays.
However, there is a fantastic, quirkier, sometimes quicker way to traverse the city. This way is the Sheirut:
A Sheirut (Hebrew for "service") is a shared taxi that looks like a yellow minivan. There are as least as many of these in service as busses. They also have a number and run the same routes as the busses. They cost the same as the busses. However, they only have 10 seats, and they stop whenever you ask them to. Want to stop at a certain store? Bellow from the back: "Ta'atzor, b'vakasha!" and the driver will stop wherever possible.
The added element of weirdness on a sheirut is how you pay: upon entering, it's expected that the passengers will immediately find a seat so the van can continue moving and won't block traffic. Once seated, the passenger will give his money to the person sitting in front, who will in turn pass it up to the driver through a chain of passengers. The driver will count it with one hand while operating the vehicle (sometimes at the peril of everyone onboard), issue change from an automatic dispenser, and pass it back through the passengers again. There's a strange camaraderie in this expeditiousness that is utterly cool.
Also much more noticeable on a sheirut is the personality of the driver: one driver had an abacus built into his dashboard to keep track of the number of passengers, some are angry and constantly yelling into the CB radio, one was completely chill and was blasting a Vivaldi CD while whistling along, and some older passengers asked him to turn it up.
Coming soon to my neighborhood are bike rentals from an automatic rack. As far as I can tell, they can be rented by credit card from the kiosk above, which remotely unlocks a bike from a post. The bikes aren't here yet, but they should be ready later this month, and I can't wait to try it out.
Finally, feet. The Tel Aviv Marathon was this last Friday morning. This was the scene on the street at 6:30AM:
18,000 people showed up, according to the local paper. All cars parked on the boulevard were towed at night and there were many street closed in the city. Here's a view from the roof, with runners coming down the street in the 5th or so kilometer:
The guy in yellow below yelled to the marathon volunteers: "Why aren't you cheering??" They started cheering.
Coda: I broke at least 3 traffic laws finding a route to work that morning, but it was a fun day.
2 comments:
Friday is a weekend so that's when one holds a marathon. Your school is in session on Fridays because it's "American" school? What's up that? What other challenges does that create for you?
In Mexico, or at least many parts of Mexico, there's a service similar to "Service" called the Collectivo. Big van thing, max of 10 or so passengers, a few pesos to ride (I think it converted to about 50 cents, very slightly more if you used it to go between towns, like we did occasionally). I loved it.
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