– by Alexander Jones –

Stop me if this sounds familiar. You’re newly arrived in a foreign land. You’ve just stepped off a bus in Tel Aviv and need to get outside, eat a meal and find your hotel. The only thing between you and a soft pillow is the daunting maze that is the Central Bus Station. Looking for the exit doesn’t seem too much to ask, and yet 10, 20 and 30 minutes later you’re still wandering its often derelict corridors. Well dear readers, this experience common to many visitors and locals alike is about to become a memory. 54 miserable years since construction began, the Tel Aviv Municipality has announced it will finally close the Central Bus Station.

While Tel Aviv is the major hub for transportation in this part of Israel, the city’s population is less than half a million. In the 1960s when the bus station was first planned, the population was only slightly less than this and continued growth was expected. Thus, architect Ram Karmi was entrusted with building what eventually became a 230,000 m2 monolith on the south-eastern edge of the city. To put this into perspective, Grand Central Station in New York City is less than 200,000 m2 while India’s massive Mofussil Bus Station in Chennai, is less than 150,000 m2. Indeed today little Tel Aviv possesses the world’s largest bus station despite its modest population and the conspicuous lack of long distance journeys. The longest trip one can take from here is just 370km away to Eilat and there are no international services whatsoever.

Delays dogged the much maligned station from the start. Construction began in 1967 but the first bus trip wasn’t taken until 1993. Originally meant to have platforms on all five floors, neither of the two largest Israeli bus companies, Dan and Egged, wanted to have their departure platforms buried in the gloomy underground section. They also refused to share a floor, and thus a sixth and then seventh floor were added. In the end no company agreed to take the lower floors so the 1st and 2nd floors have never been used. The access ramps, escalators and stairs taking people up were deliberately made to be confusing, hoping this would create a sense of a city within the city where riders would want to spend more time mingling with one another, stopping to eat and drink, and of course, shopping. The idea was that the station would become as much a destination in its own right as a place where a journey simply begins or ends.

Is the escalator working?

Architect Ram Karmi is the son of the first Israel Prize winning architect: legendary Dov Karmi. Karmi the elder is credited with giving the young Tel Aviv its now world famous ‘international’ style. He was part of a young generation inspired (and in a few cases, actually trained at) Germany’s Bauhaus School where form was taught as being subservient to function. If a feature wasn’t necessary on a building, it was gone. He designed many homes which are now listed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites as well as the Knesset (Israel’s parliament in Jerusalem) and the home of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in Tel Aviv (Heichal HaTarbut, literally the ‘culture palace’). The younger Ram initially worked alongside his father and sister, with whom he designed the Israeli Supreme Court in 1992 and for which they won their own Israel Prizes.

Soon after, however, he fully adopted the brutalist style and promptly dotted several awful white elephants around the country. In the 1990s he built the massive Holyland Apartment Complex in Jerusalem, dubbed ‘the horror on the hill’. It engulfed many high profile figures in controversy including Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (who was charged with bribery and money laundering) and Jerusalem major Uri Lupolianski (who was charged with corruption). Both of them did prison time around the illegal rezoning which made the project possible. Later, in the 2000s, Karmi’s renovation of HaBima Theatre in Tel Aviv was awarded to him without due process. It eventually went five times over budget and was also widely criticised. But his Central Bus Station is surely the most unappealing.

It was built in the working class Neve Sha’anan neighbourhood. The bus station hindered development here so totally that today it is mostly home to migrant workers and asylum seekers. Drugs, prostitution and crime exist here in quantities unseen in other parts of Tel Aviv. Prestigious Rothschild Boulevard is just a few minutes walk away, but you would struggle to believe Tel Aviv is the world’s most expensive city if strolling from here to the bus station. The air pollution is so bad in the vicinity of the station, as old buses change down gears to groan up steep ramps, that a recent study found that CO2 levels on nearby Levinsky Street were 30% higher than the nationally acceptable standard.

South Tel Aviv’s Neve Sha’anan neighborhood

New transportation minister, Labour leader Merav Michaeli, made it her mission to close the station. Supported by Meretz’s Environment Minister Tamar Zandberg, they announced plans to increase park’n’ride stations on the outskirts of the city, introduce more electric buses and build a new terminal near the Panorama Center along the beach in north Tel Aviv. They say this will happen by 2023 but give no indication of what will happen to the hundreds of tonnes of concrete or the 1000 plus people who work in the station every day. Michaeli admits demolition is unlikely to be possible.

Despite its serious shortcomings and hundreds of empty stores, currently the bus station nevertheless hosts some remarkable spots. It’s the best place in town to try halo halo; the Filipino dessert of crushed ice, condensed milk, and jellies, which has recently been taking Instagram by storm. It’s home to the ‘Yung Yidish’ Cultural Center; a library, performance space and museum preserving pre-Holocaust European Jewish culture and teaching the Yiddish language to a new generation. Migrant workers receive legal help and can book flights home from affordable offices based here. You can find a rare bat colony in the bottom two floors. There’s a street art gallery on the top. But talking to some of the people who work in the station, the frustration of life here over the past decades is matched only by the frustration they feel about the future. They have been given no information about what happens next and have no idea where they will go.

Mendy Cahan of Yung Yidish

Motti, a shop keeper in the busy main floor who sells clothes, says there has been talk about closing the building for years but he doesn’t believe it will ever happen. He admits he hates the building, but doesn’t think he’ll be going anywhere new any time soon. Founder of the Yiddish center, singer Mendy Cahan, runs his remarkable, ramshackle space on a shoestring budget and with help from volunteers. Just last year their precious collection of books, photographs and other memories of Ashkenazi life were professionally filed and organised on dozens of brand new, three metre-high, shelving units. There is no way they can afford a new space in the brutal Tel Aviv real estate market if the bus station closes.

It seems likely that the tragedy that is the Central Bus Station will claim another few victims before it finally disappears. Until then, the latest announcement is that bus lines will gradually be moved from the station to elsewhere in the city but exactly where, when and how all remain unanswered questions.

Green Olive can provide private tours of South Tel Aviv, including the central bus station. Click here for more information!