1/11/92

The Day They Raced and People Raged

By: Sam Orbaum

WHO in City Hall will take the blame for last Tuesday's Jerusalem Marathon?
    The city was virtually closed down for four hours in the middle of a work day, and badly snarled long after, so that 84 people could attempt the full marathon (a few hundred more ran a half-marathon, but the event was essentially organized for those noble 84).
    Can anyone in Mayor Kollek's decision-making echelon explain why Jerusalem taxpayers had to finance their own punishment, for an event that benefited no one?
    The morning after, everybody in town had indignant questions to ask of each other, and the only ones with any answers were silent. Half a million individual inconveniences amount to one mass outrage.
    City councillors would have sailed through the police cordons that cut off the rest of us from our homes and offices, but my family suffered.
    We live in Gilo, a community of 35,000 that was cut off by the marathon route. My wife was forced to walk up a long hill - the buses were halted for these 84 athletes - to retrieve our children from pre-nursery. She was then forced to return the half-kilometer, on foot, with three uncooperative two-year-olds.
    Her parents had just arrived from England; their plane was delayed five hours and they did not sleep all night. I was prevented from picking them up at their midtown hotel, so they took a taxi that was forced to take a risky route through an Arab village on a mad detour to get close to Gilo.
    The taxi was not allowed to cross the marathon route and was forced to dump my parents-in-law three blocks from home, obliging them to lug their weighty bags the rest of the way. That distance, for two people almost 80 years old, was a marathon in itself.
    And yet both athletes and citizenry could have been accommodated. The route could have been intelligently mapped out to allow minimum disruption to city life. In Gilo, for instance, the two arteries leading to the rest of the city are each six lanes wide. Four or five of them could easily have served the public. But the city sealed off all 12 lanes on both roads.

THE people of Jerusalem were the big losers; who benefited?
    The city spent mounds of money to finance the race, making signs and planting them along the route, promoting the event, policing it, snarling the city's economic routine, providing medical services, organizational costs, and painting blue and red lines all through the route. Whatever the cost was, the race was held one day after the city announced that the property tax (arnona) is to be raised another 10 percent this coming year.
    What did the capital gain from the race? Certainly not civic prestige, for participation was embarrassingly low (other city marathons draw as many as 25,000). It couldn't have brought much money from tourism, as few people could have been enticed to town for the race, except for the runners themselves.
    The athletes? Participants were angered by the sloppy planning and execution. The uphill-downhill route was uncommonly grueling; the winner said it was the toughest race he'd ever run.
    No one was able to finish in the minimum time - so no one qualified for prize money. Still, according to marathon official Yitzhak Ofek, "the opportunity to run in Jerusalem is worth a million dollars."
    What really sticks in my craw are those blue and red painted lines, when what the city needs is white ones. Most of our roads are not marked, because the transport authorities are either trying to save money at the expense of safety or don't think it is important to have clearly delineated streets. Without such guidance, anarchy and confusion rule the road as drivers have no rules to drive by, and create their own lanes and stop lines. Crosswalks are faded sometimes to invisibility, creating a mortal danger. Pedestrians will be in danger of getting run over, while those infuriating blue and red stripes remain.
    Whoever imposed last week's marathon on us should be run right out of town.