Attack: Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat was caught on camera, harshly attacking the company Stips, which operates the city's light rail system.
The Formula One race is currently taking place in Jerusalem, and the municipality asked STIPS to increase the frequency of trains to accommodate those coming to the race, but STIPS refused to do so without receiving payment from the municipality.
The municipality was outraged by this, and during the groundbreaking ceremony for the high-speed rail line between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, Barkat was recorded on news cameras 2, angrily saying, "What crap," Barkat said to a man standing next to him, "Do you understand that they can't get by without money? I'm shocked. They won't take any money from me!" he declared.
The Jerusalem Municipality said in response to Hadashot 2, "Unfortunately, 'Citypass', the light rail franchise, failed to provide any real increase in travel and demanded a huge sum of 100,000 shekels in exchange for the train arriving every 4.5 minutes instead of every 6 minutes, in addition to the profits from ticket purchases, which appears to be extortion at the expense of Jerusalem residents and the Municipality will not tolerate it.".
""Therefore, the municipality organized to operate free shuttles from the National Park and Teddy Park, in order to provide a solution both upon arrival and at the end of the event. It is important to emphasize that after the proposal was sent and before negotiations were conducted regarding it, CityPass announced that it was withdrawing its proposal (less than a day after the proposal was sent).".
Citypass responded to the comments by saying, "Despite the fact that the mayor's statements are shameful and unworthy of a response, we would like to set the record straight, and in the language of adults: We regret that the municipality chose to blame Citypass for its failures.".
Citypass added that "municipal representatives contacted Citypass at the last minute with a request to reinforce trains. It seems as if the municipality was surprised by the event and did not think to prepare for it in advance. Nevertheless, Citypass invested considerable efforts to respond to requests for reinforcement and submitted a proposal accordingly. Unfortunately, we did not receive any response from the municipality to the proposal.".
""Regarding the financial matter, within the framework of the current agreement with the state, CityPass does not receive additional consideration from travel tickets and/or passengers, and therefore the increase is supposed to be made against payment. It is puzzling that the municipality is not familiar with the details even though they were explained to it and even though the municipality itself is a party to the agreement.".
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