Stopping the Cable Car to the Old City

02/09/20

Ahead of a High Court hearing on the future of the planned project of a cable car leading to Jerusalem’s Old City, the NGO Emek Shaveh launched a campaign calling on the Tourism Minister to stop the plan, which would massively change the city’s skyline and harm the Historic Basin of the holy sites in and around the Old City. 

This campaign drew the support of over 3,500 Zazim members. The project includes a row of enormous pillars, ancillary buildings for passenger-stations, major infrastructure, and dozens of cable-car carriages. According to the opinions of professionals, beyond the irreversible harm to the vista and skyline, the plan would not solve - and even seems likely to worsen - transportation congestion and gridlock in the area. 

This unusual and unnecessary project began as a proposal for the Committee for National Infrastructure, and was never subject to hearings with the relevant building and planning committees, despite the clear necessity emerging from the historic, religious-cultural, and architectural significance of the area. The cancellation of the project will save hundreds of millions of shekels which could be used to find other solutions to help support tourism in and around the Old City and to benefit all of Jerusalem’s residents. 

Israel’s High Court issued a conditional injunction halting the project’s progress, and demanded that the state explain why the project had not been approved via the standard planning procedures, and why it must not be cancelled in consideration of the inappropriate way it came to be. 

Photo: Emek Shaveh