Comments by "Ynhockey" (@Ynhockey) on "Living costs in ISRAEL (It's EXPENSIVE!)" video.

  1. It depends, in Tel Aviv 60 m2 is considered pretty big, compared to any other city where it's considered tiny. So in the most desirable areas it might cost about $2,000 for a 60 m2 unfurnished old place. However, it's definitely possible to find 60 m2 apartments for $1,600 is relatively good areas of Tel Aviv, like around the university or in Montefiore (actually the most desirable for high tech workers, but I guess not everyone else). Just checked Yad2 to confirm, and it's still true.
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  2. It's not true that Israel didn't do anything with the rail system since the British/Ottomans. In fact, most of our rail system is in completely new transport corridors, most notably the coastal railway, Ayalon railway and the new train to Jerusalem. The few old corridors used have been or are being built 100% from scratch, notably the Jezreel valley railway and the "eastern" railway. The reason Israel's system is not so great is that in the 1960s and 70s, when road investment was supplanting rail investment everywhere in the world, including in Europe, Israel has a broken half-destroyed system meant for a population of 1 million, with just one heavily utilized line (Tel Aviv – Haifa). In Germany and other European countries (and Japan) they entered that "dry" period with thousands of kilometers of track and a slowly-growing population, meaning the corridors were there to refurbish when rail systems were being rebuilt later on. Israel on the other hand saw itself with blocked routes where major land expropriations, tunnels or detours were necessary, and this makes construction very expensive to this day. Adding just a few km of track in the Ayalon is now going to cost over a Billion US dollars (!!!). Even so, pre-COVID almost every line had a train every 20 minutes or less, with over 93% accuracy, which is not bad by international comparison. I think Israel Railways has been more accurate, on average, than Deutsche Bahn, for at least 10 years, which is very surprising.
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  3. ​ @Travelingisraelinfo  Actually Berlin is the foreign city I've been to the most times :) their network is just vastly larger than ours, so in that sense, you are right that it's in a different league entirely. They also have the S-Bahn which is similar to our suburban lines, and it's better, but I am only comparing to DB. In terms of frequency and accuracy per line, DB is not that great. It's considered among the worst in Western Europe, and statistically it's slightly worse than Israel Railways. Overall I do think that Berlin's public transport is excellent, but it's mostly due to U-Bahn and S-Bahn, not so much DB. Regarding investment, I think you meant couple of decades :) but that's again only half-true. Israel invested heavily in rail in its early years. It bought ultra-modern Esslingen carriages with German reparation money and built the coastal railway, one of its first and most impressive megaprojects. However, in the late 60s and 70s investment almost halted, and was only renewed in the late 1980s, when the Ayalon tracks were started. Since then the investment has been much greater, especially under Sharon and Netanyahu, only halting briefly during the short-lived Olmert government (for many reasons).
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