“When I visited Tripoli, I liked it as much as I didn’t like how far it was. For the same reason, I visited Tyre only once.” This is how Carla Machaalani, from Zahle, summarized her mobility among regions. “Such regions may not be far, but this is our perception of them, since the access to such regions is difficult. The high cost of transportation made matters worse. Moreover, driving licenses are not issued for anyone of us who may be able to afford a car. We are the rising generation that was abused by the crisis. We don’t know how does our neighbor live in the “near Lebanese galaxy,” she said.
The young girl, who moved to Beirut to work and study, tackled what she described as a “hardship” that went beyond internal tourism, so that the problem became: how do I move to see my parents who live in Zahle?
In fact, “the vans that I take from Chayah are the only means,” she said while wondering about the lack of buses that connect Beirut to Zahle. “I had three traffic accidents due to the imprudence of some van drivers,” she said. Such risks are unlimited since “vans don’t prerequisite the driver competence and are not available for riders,” she said. It is important to note that the fee of these vans were up to 300 Lebanese Pounds by April 2023, i.e. the equivalent of a rider fee to take Tripoli-Beirut line in luxurious and available buses.
Soha Halab and her colleagues at Lebanon Readers Society hold seminars regularly to discuss books and encourage young authors. She told us that the club succeeded to create a permanent reader base in Beirut. However, it was difficult for such readers to reach another main goal, i.e. “to break the cultural isolation among regions and be free from the centrality of the capital,” she said. “Our friends in Beirut were not able to join the regions’ activities. They anticipated the difficulty of transportation with this question: is transportation available? While organizing an activity in Tyre, we noticed the chance to go from Beirut to Saida in comfortable buses, but the mobility from Saida to Tyre was limited to “vans.” As we had to return in the evening, many people disregarded participation. Therefore, the activities in regions are only attended by the area residents,” she said.
As such, few Lebanese didn’t hear or read in the beautiful and small country the following belief: “You can visit all of Lebanon in one day,” and “you can move from sea to mountain in half an hour”, while many Lebanese have experienced the opposite; This belief may be valid for people who own private cars that they use to move voluntarily and can bear their costs; However, this equation is a “fairy tale” for people who don’t have cars, and are not remunerated through efficient public transportation.
In a country that does not balance development among regions, the centrality of Beirut does not exclude transportation: when you descend slowly from the eastern hills, you will notice a giant yellow cloud of toxic emissions that covers the city’s landscape, which is confused and distorted by the overcrowded concrete along with its complicated chaos that stretches to the rocky extension in the sea that is called Beirut, and which appears to be more coherent with the sea and the surrounding areas. However, the said areas live disconnected like archipelagoes separated by fake gaps due to the difficulty of access. Consequently, communication is affected or absent among areas.
“Transportation Ponzi scheme”!
Chadi Faraj, co-founder of “Riders’ Rights” synthesizes the image of a “public transportation system that depends on individuals and works in an irregular way. The system is based on formal and informal taxis and vans, and buses running at unspecified times,” in addition to the concentration of urban informal settlements in the Greater Beirut Area (GBA), thus causing more transportation problems.”
He considers that “the centralization in economics is enhanced by the lack of public transportation, which led 60% to 70% of Lebanese to live in Beirut. Lebanon has become dependent on the “economy of major cities”, according to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), while villages and towns are ignored. All these factors increase social fractures among Lebanese people, and have made transportation as a cemetery for the economy.”
At the socioeconomic level, Faraj pointed out to “the most important reasons of the transportation crisis, which are related to the reliance of citizens on individual private transportation and the need for having a car in the Lebanese community culture.” This stereotype was supported by the “incentives enshrined in the local economy and their legislations under the capitalist logic solely, especially before the crisis that hit in fall 2019; the car loan facilities, the import of cars, the profits of private insurance companies, and the increase in oil imports”; He called this vicious circle the “transportation Ponzi scheme.”
Failed policy and fragmented municipalities
Faraj has no doubts regarding the poor public transportation in Lebanon, “since transportation is a reflection of policy and the Lebanese system.” While talking formally about transportation, he brings up terms such as “traffic”, “traffic congestion”, “traffic safety”, and the “traffic law” … Moreover, “governments elaborate security and timely solutions, because they care for traffic and not transportation. However, traffic problems are only symptoms and consequences. There is no serious and thorough discussion about the reasons. Similarly, the Parliament’s Public Works and Transportation Committee focuses on traffic and does not address transportation, just like the Ministry of Public Works and Transport (MoPWT) that targets works only,” he said.
Similarly to the abovementioned, “when the cost of transportation bursts, the minister mentions a transportation allowance for employees. However, the same allocation enables the ministry to purchase and regulate 500 buses under a sustainable and low-cost plan. Lebanon has ended the opportunity of the World Bank to develop the Bus Express Plan, which was not implemented during the one year scheduled deadline and excluded by the crisis. The 50 buses that we received from France are still waiting bids to be offered by the private sector. This matter will not take place as long as the government is still confused about pricing the budget in US dollars and Lebanese Pounds.”
“Instead of developing investment in public transportation, the situation worsened with the stop of the Railway and Public Transport Authority (RPTA) (The first authority runs the tramway and the second one buses), as a result of the Beirut Port explosion. The authority was managing public transportation lines inside and outside Beirut, including 6 buses in Beqaa.” Away from coercive circumstances, Faraj brings up the “permanence” of failure of the Lebanese transportation policy, “which can be traced back to a major mistake committed in 1964, when Lebanon became dependent solely on buses and neglected the tramway, which was known as the “fire donkey” named after the donkeys that were used in the past as a transportation means, and due to the rising smoke. The decision was made amid the drift of the world with the tide of the car industry revolution. By ten years, worldwide countries corrected their path and operated the tramway, but Lebanon was then in the phase of Civil War.”
The abovementioned fact establishes the founder’s of “Riders’ Rights” belief of the “lack of solution chances at the centralized authority level and their difficulty at the local authority level, since many municipalities are micro-villages that do not have resources or direct interest to develop transportation. The solution is to adopt public transportation projects at the level of municipality unions and governorates.”
For a while, the vulnerabilities of transportation in Lebanon are increasing and the “regional cantons” remain isolated and divided inside non-physical borders that were demarcation lines in the past. According to Faraj, it is a map capable of triggering local conflicts.
Nepotism and distortion of the transportation tradition
Similarly, Carlos Naffah, President of Train/Train association said that the “core imbalance is that people who rebuilt post-war Lebanon were not concerned with communication among the Lebanese people, since they fought in the war inside small squares including crossing points. It is normal that they think to transport cars instead of transporting people. We have to keep in mind that 20,000 permits of public red plates were granted in 1990s, as a political nepotism means, while the number of such plates is 33,000 today.”
In relation to this approach, “government projects, whether ended or implemented, transform Lebanon’s streets into a garage for cars and highways of asphalt. For 30 percent of the Lebanese people who don’t have a car, these projects are in conflict with the standards of social justice,” according to Naffah.
He regrets that Lebanon is experiencing since that time a regression and distortion in the “tradition of transportation.” Lebanon was ahead in using public transportation in the Near East by owning the first railway of Beirut-Al Sham line, which was opened on August 4, 1985, i.e. just 125 years before the port’s tragedy. Trains were a center for an organized network where branched out buses making trips to the regions.”
Solution: Lebanon is on the way to have a train?
Furthermore, Lebanon has fundamentals to activate an inclusive and non-centralized network that starts from the train railways. Therefore, the future solution is reflected through developing the tools of the past. Train/Train is mobilizing support and advocacy for this “case” under the slogan “Lebanon on the rail”. Naffah reveals that the “current government is in the process of determining the railway to be adopted by virtue of the master plan that we submitted, and which includes a sample of Tripoli line,” while providing details of ready resources to achieve the plan:
First, the land is available and is the most expensive phase. Lebanon has 403 kilometers of railways along the coast line and the lines of Beirut/Riyaq, Riyaq/Damascus, Riyaq/Homs up to Baalbek and northern Beqaa.
Lebanon imported the railways from Italy in 2005. They are preserved against the natural elements in the Port of Tripoli and serve Akkar-Tripoli line. Lebanon also has 7 American low-emission electro-diesel trains relatively and 5 polish S245 trains that are still adopted in Germany.
Naffah confirms the adoption of a multimodality plan. Therefore, the train station is connected to the tramway that stops in its turn at main arteries in areas to pick up riders to their destinations in small buses. The plan is ended by safe pathways for bikes and encourages the “easy mobility” for pedestrians.
The plan avoids the abolition decisions that are followed by a public resistance through “upgrading” and coordinating the terms of traditional transportation, such as Tuk Tuk, motorcycles, carpooling groups and vans, according to the analysis of the people’s daily mobility and determining the rush hour and relevant locations.
Social justice in transportation
According to Naffah, what is worth to evaluate in terms of the “differential value” in the suggested plan is a wing provided for “social justice” in Lebanon through transportation, which is a human birthright.
He explains that “the railway of the Lebanese coast is qualified to establish 48 stations, attracting private investments to build the largest malls and hotels and creating distinctive impacts on tourism and regional development, in addition to dismantling the centrality of transport and tourism activities. The official departments may be moved to the stations where formalities can be completed. Therefore, traffic jams will be reduced, just like the case of London and many European cities.”
Finally, Naffah considers that the electricity crisis is an opportunity to operate electric buses and ensure an economic resource for population of villages. Therefore, social gaps will be reduced among regions. “In addition to the low cost and the benefits of green energy, laws must be enacted to allow citizens to produce electricity. Citizens produce now around 800 megawatts of electricity through solar energy, which is equivalent to a factory’s efficiency. Consequently, local solar energy farms may be established in villages and towns to charge electric buses.”
This crisis may suggest a dead end, but it entails an ambition in the process of taking form for an environmental, modern, coherent and inclusive transportation for the whole society and regions, and an elderly and disabled friendly transportation, i.e. a transportation that contributes to transforming Lebanon from closed and distant archipelagos to familiar “cosmopolitan regions”.