My only critique with regard to the Tel Aviv metro is that it is probably worth the additional expense to put it underground. A rocket hitting a viaduct and taking it off line would be very burdensome to fix. The entire metro also serves as a dual use bomb shelter. I think the Moscow metro can even withstand nuclear blasts. I think Yitchak Navon would probably be able to survive a nuclear strike as well.
Edit: I am writing a book on Israel and a big part of it is on urbanism. What I have diagnosed as the main urban planning problem is that for whatever reason Israelis think the Corbussier apartment building in the middle of nowhere surrounded by parking is a good idea. It is quite literally the worst style of urbanism. American subrbanism would be a ginormous improvement. Going on Google street view and looking at Kiryat Gat gave me a headache. Townhouses townhouses townhouse and more townhouses! I am also generally against high-rise residential buildings as they have very negative effects on birth rates. It is probably worthwhile to mandate a law that all apartments have at minimum 5 bedrooms/6 rooms.
Re your last point: yes absolutely, it drives me crazy. Whenever I'm on the road from Lod to Tel Aviv I see all these clusters of midrises that could be ideal candidates for suburban metro stops instead of being surrounded by parking lots, it drives me crazy to see them while I'm stuck in traffic.
(Fun story: my brother once interviewed the head of netivei Israel, the national transportation company, who told him "anyone advocating for another highway lane that's not a bus lane now needs to be hanged in the town square.")
Generally: maybe. I still mostly don't think it's a cost effective way to build bomb shelters, but given that most of the cost is the stations themselves it might pan out. The thing that really frustrates me is the dankal - it would've been pretty easy to just make it fully automated and much higher speed and capacity by building it on viaducts in the currently aboveground sections (which wouldn't be protected anyway). And they're all on ugly road medians like namir, so there's no aesthetic cost either.
The navon station specifically I think is terrible (putting something just barely underground can make sense. Putting it so far underground it adds another ten minutes to the trip just to get in and out of the station is crazy. I see the argument for having a nuclear bunker, but they could've just built one under the station).
(There's more complicated arguments about handling the elevation difference from the coast - that really does limit how shallow you can make a station - but the transitcosts people have some research showing ypu really could build shallower stations in Jerusalem, especially with the planned extension).
My only critique with regard to the Tel Aviv metro is that it is probably worth the additional expense to put it underground. A rocket hitting a viaduct and taking it off line would be very burdensome to fix. The entire metro also serves as a dual use bomb shelter. I think the Moscow metro can even withstand nuclear blasts. I think Yitchak Navon would probably be able to survive a nuclear strike as well.
Edit: I am writing a book on Israel and a big part of it is on urbanism. What I have diagnosed as the main urban planning problem is that for whatever reason Israelis think the Corbussier apartment building in the middle of nowhere surrounded by parking is a good idea. It is quite literally the worst style of urbanism. American subrbanism would be a ginormous improvement. Going on Google street view and looking at Kiryat Gat gave me a headache. Townhouses townhouses townhouse and more townhouses! I am also generally against high-rise residential buildings as they have very negative effects on birth rates. It is probably worthwhile to mandate a law that all apartments have at minimum 5 bedrooms/6 rooms.
Re your last point: yes absolutely, it drives me crazy. Whenever I'm on the road from Lod to Tel Aviv I see all these clusters of midrises that could be ideal candidates for suburban metro stops instead of being surrounded by parking lots, it drives me crazy to see them while I'm stuck in traffic.
(Fun story: my brother once interviewed the head of netivei Israel, the national transportation company, who told him "anyone advocating for another highway lane that's not a bus lane now needs to be hanged in the town square.")
Generally: maybe. I still mostly don't think it's a cost effective way to build bomb shelters, but given that most of the cost is the stations themselves it might pan out. The thing that really frustrates me is the dankal - it would've been pretty easy to just make it fully automated and much higher speed and capacity by building it on viaducts in the currently aboveground sections (which wouldn't be protected anyway). And they're all on ugly road medians like namir, so there's no aesthetic cost either.
The navon station specifically I think is terrible (putting something just barely underground can make sense. Putting it so far underground it adds another ten minutes to the trip just to get in and out of the station is crazy. I see the argument for having a nuclear bunker, but they could've just built one under the station).
(There's more complicated arguments about handling the elevation difference from the coast - that really does limit how shallow you can make a station - but the transitcosts people have some research showing ypu really could build shallower stations in Jerusalem, especially with the planned extension).