Recent Photos from Israel (January-June 2010)

[WMATAGMOAGH]

I'm playing catchup on Israel photos, and I'll post some of my favorites from the winter and spring months in this thread.

First up:  It is Fun to Photograph by the Jerusalem Y-M-C-A!

The Jerusalem YMCA Building is one of the most recognizable buildings on the Jerusalem skyline, with its distinctive architectural style.  The building is home to a hotel, gym, auditorium, a 152 foot high observation deck. and the building was even nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.










Here are some other photos taken in the vicinity of the YMCA along King David Street:



The white lettering at the top of the windshield in the photo below says "MAN Bus of the Year 2007."  Several other buses have such labels, including one that appeared in January saying it was the bus of the year for 010.  No clue what it means to be bus of the year however (though it seems as if drivers keep their bus, so there might be a connection to that).

[mrpete]

In the European transit industry "Bus of the Year" is like Motor Trend's "Car of the Year" award here.

[WMAveteran]

Oren: thank you.  I suggest that you translate some of the destination signs on the buses for us. 

[WMATAGMOAGH]

In the European transit industry "Bus of the Year" is like Motor Trend's "Car of the Year" award here.

Thanks for this info, but why apply that label to a specific bus in the Egged fleet, unless it is just the initiative of a single driver?  There are so many other random things on Egged windshields to the point my non busfan friends can identify certain buses, and I'll be sharing photos of some of those buses in future posts. 

Oren: thank you.  I suggest that you translate some of the destination signs on the buses for us. 

So bus destination signs for intracity Jerusalem service either names an important point of interest where the bus terminates (i.e. Tachana Merkazit (Central Bus Station), Binyenei HaUma (Convention Center), Kotel (Western Wall)), the neighborhood where the bus terminates, or the street where the layover point is.  In the case of neighborhoods, most neighborhoods have a masof (terminal) akin to the turnaround loop at Chevy Chase Circle on the L1/L2/L4.  You can get a sense of how this works by looking at the bus map I created for Jerusalem at jlembusmap.com, where all the buses that serve Gilo, Ramot, and Givat Masua, among other neighborhoods, all end up at the same off street terminal, even if they dont' take the same route to get there (the best example of this are routes 31, 32, 71, and 72, which all start and end in Ramot and Gilo but take different routes to get there).  When a bus has an off street terminal, the bus generally does not carry passengers between the first/last stop and the terminal where the layover occurs.  Usually, this is a distance of just a few meters, but I've seen it be as much as a long block in some places, and in one case, the layover point is on the other side of a 4 lane road and in a totally different neighborhood than the first/last stops (yet the bus is still signed for the layover point).  On my map, I drew the lines all the way into the terminals in all cases however.  In some cases, buses are signed with a neighborhood destination but the "terminal" is on the street.  However, some on-street layovers/terminals are signed with the street name.  You'll see examples of these in a moment.

The 21 is going to Ramat Sharett, which literally translates to Sharett Heights.  The neighborhood is named for Moshe Sharret who was Prime Minister of Israel from 1953 to 1955.

The 30 is going to Gilo, which I believe takes its name from a Biblical town of the same name.  Biblical Gilo was mentioned in the Book of Joshua (Joshua 15:51) and the Book of Samuel (II Sam 15:12).  Scholars now identify biblical Gilo with Kurbet Jala, about 7 miles north of Hebron.

The 18 is going to Stern, or if you want a proper transliteration, Schtern.  Stern is a street in the Kiryat HaYovel neighborhood named after Avraham (Yair) Stern, who lived from 1907-1942.  He was a leading underground fighter during the British Mandate and took the name Yair to honor Elazar ben Yair, the commander of the zealots at Masada.  He was an active member of the Irgun, opposed the supression of anti-British attacks in World War II, and formed the group, Lehi, which continued the armed struggle for Jewish independence.  He even believed that the British were a greater threat to the Jewish people than the Nazis were, and attempted to persuade the Axis Powers to adopt a pro-Jewish policy in the British Mandate.  What is funny about this destination sign is that many English speakers have trouble figuring out what word this is in Hebrew, since it isn't actually a Hebrew word, nor is it the name of a neighborhood or a well known street.  To compound matters further, the first letter in Hebrew used to spell his name has an "sh" sound, although in English, the way we say Stern does not.

[WMAveteran]

Cool, thank you very much for that information. 

[WMATAGMOAGH]

Here are some more of my "recent" photos from Israel.  These were taken on the afternoon of April 28.
 
  I got a few shots of buses on the Derech Hevron bus lanes while on my way to Gilo:







Not technically in the bus lane, but about to turn into it, so I'll throw it in:


And now we make it to Gilo.  Gilo is one of the southernmost neighborhoods in all of Jerusalem.  Built on a high hill, it is so high in elevation it sometimes gets its own weather, including snow, that the rest of the city does not receive.  I often biked through Gilo, and decided there would be some good bus photo vantage points, and ultimately tried them out.  Here are some of the results:

















BONUS PHOTOS:

Bonus #1:  I tried to find out from Egged via its Facebook page what these Mercedes-Benz Sprinter mini buses are used for.  The answer I received is "special trips and service in neighborhoods in Haifa."  They wouldn't really elaborate on what the special trips might be for, and clearly this bus isn't being used for service in Haifa.


Bonus #2:  A Volvo B12B bus, operated by Illit, passing through Gilo on its way to Beitar Illit.  In addition to operating the Jerusalem-Beitar Illit service, Illit also operates intercity services from Beitar Illit to Beit Shemesh and Bnei Brak, as well as local services within Beitar Illit itself.



More still to come...


P.S. for WMAveteran:  The first 31 photo, as well as the 32 and 33, are all signed for Gilo, surprisingly enough ;-).  In the first photo, the bus coming towards the camera says "NOT IN SERVICE", which is a sign rarely seen on Egged buses.  Deadheading buses usually display the most recently used sign or the next sign to be used, or they are blank and have either 000 or in the spot for the route number (you can see the 000 reading in the photo of the Mercedes-Benz artic in the traffic circle, and the MAN in the traffic circle shows a blank sign).  The 74 is signed for Homat Shmuel, which is the new, official name of Har Homa, but most people call the neighborhood by the latter name.  Har Homa sits on a hill overlooking Bethlehem and Beit Sahour, and there is quite a view of the neighborhood from Shepards Field in Beit Sahour.  Many people are critical of the fact the neighborhood cuts off the land that would link Bethlehem to East Jerusalem, although it is also worth noting that the neighborhood was originally built with the intention that Arabs would live there, and they never moved in.  The 31 and 71 are signed for Ramot, which is a neighborhood in northwestern Jerusalem.  The 159 just says "SPECIAL" on its sign, I forget what the other reading said.  The actual 159 doesn't come to this neighborhood, and I saw other buses that also showed this "special" kind of sign in other spots in the city, but I'm not sure what the purpose of those trips is.

[WMAveteran]

Very "illuminating", (pardon the pun), thank you very much for the translation and explanation.

[WMATAGMOAGH]

For a change of sorts, here are some recent photos I've taken of bus operators in Israel besides Egged and Dan, the two largest operators.

Here is an Egged Taavura bus.  Egged Taavura is really just a subsidiary of Egged but it operates as if its a company of its own in pretty much every way.  I took this photo at the Arlozorov Terminal (2000 Terminal) where Egged Taavura doesn't operate any routes that I know of so I'm not sure what it was doing there.



Most of Connex's operations are in the Tiberias area, but here is a photo of a Connex bus in Tel Aviv:



An Illit bus in Jerusalem:



Here are two photos of the same Afikim bus in the area by the Carmelit Terminal in Tel Aviv:





Here is a Superbus at the Mount Herzl Military Cemetery bus stop in Jerusalem:



Finally, here are some photos of Metropoline buses in Tel Aviv, some of their Volvo B12B buses have WiFi access on board:

[WMATAGMOAGH]

In recognition of the fact Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath, tends to not be widely observed in Tel Aviv in the traditional way (as I understand it, I make a point of not being there on Shabbat), here are some of my recent bus photos from that city for your viewing pleasure this Friday evening:

I'm not sure why this bus is all white and not in any of the usual paint schemes:










Next to the Jaffa Clocktower:















Dan doesn't operate much intercity service, but here is one of the buses that does operate on their intercity routes:


And here are some Egged photos:


The next 4 photos are from the Egged parking lot in Holon:









An Egged intercity bus operates on a local, intracity Tel Aviv route:

[WMATAGMOAGH]

Title says it all, here we go.  We start off with some photos from under the Strings Bridge at the start of the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway.  The bridge is open to pedestrians already and will also carry light rail trains over a busy intersection.











And here are others:


















In April, this bus had a funky wrap advertising the new H&M store in Jerusalem:


Here is the same bus without the wrap, photo taken in June:


This bus is wishing riders a happy Passover:




This one is being used as a security barrier on Yom HaAtzmaut, Israeli independence day:










Navigating the light rail construction:




The only Egged bus that I know of to have an orange LED sign, I also photographed it back in October:


More Passover greetings:

[WMATAGMOAGH]

Other than to say sometimes, intercity (over the road) buses wind up providing suburban services, the title doesn't need explaining, so let's go straight to the photos:

Like the Poaeli Haifa bus I photographed back in December, this bus is also for a sports club, Maccabi Tel Aviv.  The bus is like a normal Egged bus on the inside except it has a TV on board (not used on regular trips as far as I know).  I also saw a bus for the Poalei Tel Aviv and Beitar Yerushalayim (Jerusalem) soccer teams back in May but didn't get photos of either one.







Volvo coach in the older paint scheme:









Armored, bomb resistant bus: