What did I learn from the light rail bench in Gush Dan

Last Friday, I rode the light rail on its first day of operation. My daughters attend high school in Tel Aviv and for two years they commuted daily by bus for an hour and a half each way. On the train, the travel time will be less than half of that (I measured it). In this article, I will share with you some thoughts that occurred to me while traveling, or more accurately, over the past year leading up to the train's operation.

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Economic implications of operating the railway

The operation of the train will have enormous economic consequences that I believe are still too early to estimate. There will be changes in the prices of apartments and offices around the train stations. There will be a situation where if public transportation until today was a solution that allowed one to reach work at perhaps the same time or slower compared to a private car, now thousands of people will have a solution that will allow them to reach work much faster. And at the price Much lower. Over the years, Israel has been making giant strides economically. One of the things holding us back from even faster progress is the low labor productivity of the Israeli worker. Labor productivity is the output achieved by an average worker for their hour of work. It's not about salary, but the output for the employer or the average output of all workers in the entire economy. Workers in Israel are not efficient, and therefore, to achieve reasonable output, they need to work many hours. The assessment of productivity refers only to the time from when work began, when an employee's card was swiped at the time clock. In practice, if it takes an employee about an hour to get from Bat Yam to the Azrieli Towers and then return at the end of the day, then:

a. After an hour on the battlefield known as the road, he arrives at the office already half-exhausted. The first half-hour to hour is dedicated to recovery. At the end of the day, he tries to postpone the inevitable and reach the road again as late as possible. He is in the office for many hours but, as mentioned, with low output (productivity) relative to his Western counterpart. Clearly, there are a series of additional factors for this besides poor transportation, but we are currently discussing transportation.

B. The employee's car, which was on the road for more or less two hours standing still, suffers from accelerated wear and tear. The employee is in an environment with increased air pollution for two hours, or simply sitting continuously and unhealthily. Overall, the body also absorbs accelerated wear and tear (home box, car box, elevator box, cubicle, and so on with sitting in front of a TV box in mental and physical exhaustion). Both the wear and tear on the employee and the wear and tear on the car severely damage the employee's quality of life and economic ability.

The same person, if they were to walk, say, 300 meters to the train station, would arrive conveniently and at a pre-determined time, as opposed to the uncertainty of the usual road. This would lead, in my opinion, to much more efficient work. Efficient work promotes the economy, thereby significantly improving not only the lives of the residents of the Gush Dan region but also the lives of the rest of the residents of Israel because The Mess The higher you'll produce more successful work.

Those with the full glass, those with the empty one, and those who see no glass at all

For several weeks now, I have been following the media coverage preparing the public for the operation of the train. As I wrote above, the train, in my opinion, is one of the most significant things that have happened here recently in general, and in the field of transportation, which is very much related to our overall quality of life, in particular. Three examples:

It is clear that it would have been preferable for the train to start operating in the seventies. It is clear that it would have been preferable for the British Mandate train that ran on Allenby Street from the station complex in Jaffa towards the north of the city, or the train that ran on Railway Street in Tel Aviv, to continue operating. There is no point in thinking about it today, but rather one should only think about the lessons that can be learned. To learn And on the things that are possible To do. People spend their whole lives thinking about an apartment, imagining that if only they had bought it in the past for X price, they would be in a completely different place today. If only they hadn't done A, they would be in a completely different place, and so on. There's no point in that. Look at the headlines above. Do they express festivity? Do they fill you with motivation for further action? Or perhaps a sour and depressing festivity? I have no claims against whoever phrases the headlines. In the end, they provide the public with what the public wants – depressing gloom that makes them keep reading instead of, say, leaving the newspaper and going easily from Petah Tikva to hummus in the flea market without looking for parking.

Let's assume I built a house And construction took longer than planned. Should I, on the day the construction is completed and years later, think about the delay in receiving the house? Blame the contractor? Myself? The architect? Or alternatively, just write in a notebook what I Can learn and improve for next time and move on. Which course of action will make me more motivated to repeat this project again? Which course of action will increase the chances that next time will be better?

Sometimes people carry the weight of not only their own mistakes—which can be demoralizing—but also the mistakes of previous generations. Countless times I’ve heard people say they don’t invest in the stock market because their father lost a lot of money there decades ago. What? Are you giving up a 6% after-tax return just because at some point in history your father lost money? Before you learned from your father what not to do, did you ask him, for example, how many books he read before he started investing? Who did he get advice from before he started investing? If he didn’t read a single book and got his advice from a friend in the reserves who also hadn’t read any books, then maybe the lesson isn’t total abstinence but simply reading a book and then investing moderately and consistently? 100,000 shekels at an interest rate of 6% will turn into over a million shekels after 40 years. If we assume that same father invested 100,000 and lost 30,000, and because of that he didn’t invest and neither did you, then the loss isn’t 30,000 shekels but Over a million shekels.

Gratitude

Hundreds of people must have worked on building the train for ten years. I haven't seen any media mention of these people. When I arrived at the station at six in the morning to take one of the first journeys, I saw a group that looked like engineers, or technicians, photographing the train, measuring, and supervising various things. I approached one of them, a man named Sun. Judging by his Hebrew, he has been here for quite a few years, far from his home in China. I told him how excited I was and how the train would affect my daughters, who would get to their school in Tel Aviv faster from Petah Tikva. His face lit up, and it was clear how happy he was with these words, seeing that his work has meaning. Every time I leave a performance or a mall and there's a guard, I say "thank you very much." Saying thank you not only does good for the person receiving the thanks, but it also does a lot of good for us. When we say thank you, it's a sign that something good happened to us for which we are saying thank you. It helps us focus on the good things, thereby increasing our joy, our optimism, and our motivation to do more things that will bring more good. It's no coincidence that in almost every book on personal and financial progress, the value of gratitude appears as something that improves sales.

Saying thank you to a waiter or a guard might be easy, but what about thanking a police officer who stopped us for speeding? Even if we are sure (and probably wrong) that the fact that we were driving over the speed limit didn't harm or endanger anyone, that same officer is standing in the sun, doing an unpleasant job, and with a duty to protect our lives. It could be that the next person they stop is a drunk driver or a driver without a license, and if they hadn't been stopped, they might have hurt someone dear to us. It could be that on another day, that same officer will be the one who receives the call from our daughter, who is complaining that she is home alone and someone is trying to break down the door, and the officer will determine what her life will be like from now on... In short, see the people who don't always see. It's good for them and great for you.

The risk of a bad event makes us enter a certain bad event.

More than a year after the construction work was completed, the train traveled dozens of times back and forth every day, empty. The reason given was a malfunction that caused the train to brake suddenly. Initially, the frequency of the braking was higher, and later it decreased until, according to the media, it was quite infrequent at times but still occurred.

I understand all the managers and ministers who didn't want to operate the train as long as it is "unsafe." After all, if someone had given permission to operate it while the train was braking uncontrollably and someone were to fall and get injured on the train, it would have caused terrible anger over the irresponsibility. I want to challenge this approach. Let's assume there were 200,000 people on the train who suffered from occasional sudden braking. Due to its non-operation, those 200,000 people, or at least a large portion of them, would travel by bus. Buses often brake suddenly, and people Casualties Within them. This impact is considered a traffic accident and can cause considerable damage. Did not operating the train cause more injuries than sudden braking or fewer? I can only guess more. Moreover, I am convinced that operating the train while warning passengers and setting limitations such as preventing use by children, the elderly, pregnant women, standing passengers, and other sensitive populations would have been much more effective than transporting the train for a year while it was empty. It didn't end with sudden braking. Those same people who traveled by bus and private car during that year caused air pollution and traffic accidents. That is, the supervisor's or the railway's perhaps justified unwillingness to take the risk of transporting passengers with Potential Sudden braking caused those passengers to suffer certainty Sudden braking and damage Certain Others.

It's similar to the fear of an autonomous car. When an autonomous car hits a person in Austin, Texas, the news reaches as far as Petah Tikva. When a person hits a person on the street near my home, it barely makes the newspaper. No one will take responsibility for autonomous cars if they think they will hit 200 people a year in Israel. But... without autonomous cars, over 300 people are killed every year.

This article was not written to give advice to ministers and CEOs. Far from it. But for you, I do have some advice, as many people also behave at the family level in the ways described above. For example, those people who tell me, "I'll only invest if I'm sure I won't lose money on the investment." These same people will become victims of one of two scenarios:

1. They will leave the money in current accounts (as of August 2023, over 500 billion shekels belonged to people who chose this alternative) and thus they will win In a sure loss Because of the erosion of the value of money by inflation, rather than the risk of loss stemming from some investment.
2. They will invest in a "risk-free" investment that is likely some kind of lie or something bordering on a scam, thereby significantly increasing their risk of a much larger loss.

We’re constantly bombarded with information, and it’s usually easier for us to access information about one side of the equation rather than the other. For example, it’s easy for us to know what the monthly mortgage payment is, but not what the total payment is. Often, when people tell me they want, say, a million shekels with a minimal payment, I reply, “Oh, so you want to pay the bank the maximum amount in total?” Sometimes this confuses people, and sometimes they have good reasons to pay as little as possible. But we must always consider both sides of the decision. Those who skimp on sudden stops are dooming themselves to more sudden stops and greater danger on the bus, just as those who fear the stock market are dooming their wealth to certain erosion. It’s challenging. It sometimes requires professional help, but it’s very important.