Hey everyone, welcome back to My Weird Prompts. I am Corn, and I am sitting here in our living room in Jerusalem, looking out at the gray February rain washing over the stone walls, and just... thinking about this city. It is Friday, February thirteenth, twenty twenty-six, and even after all these years, Jerusalem remains a place that defies easy explanation. It is a strange place to live sometimes, isn't it?
It really is, Corn. Herman Poppleberry here, at your service. And yeah, Jerusalem has this unique way of being both incredibly beautiful and deeply, profoundly frustrating all in the same ten minute span. You can be standing in the shadow of the Old City walls feeling the weight of three thousand years of history, and then ten seconds later, you are being elbowed in the ribs by someone trying to get onto a bus that is already three hundred percent over capacity.
Exactly. It is that friction that defines the Jerusalem experience. And speaking of friction, our housemate Daniel sent us a voice note today while he was actually on the Red Line of the light rail, heading toward the Central Bus Station. He was clearly fired up about what he was seeing.
I heard that recording. You could hear the distinctive bells of the Cfir train in the background, that high-pitched "ding-ding," and then that specific, slightly aggressive tone of the ticket inspectors. It is a topic that hits close to home for us because, let’s be honest, we all use that train every single day. It is the spine of the city.
Daniel’s prompt was very specific. He is asking about citizen activism. He is seeing this intense, almost intimidating regimen of ticket inspections—what some people are calling "enforcement theater"—and he feels like it is actually hurting the goal of getting people to use public transport. But here is the kicker: since the light rail is operated by a private company, Cfir, people feel stuck. They feel like they cannot even document what is happening or defend themselves without getting into legal trouble for filming in a "private domain."
It is a fascinating and deeply messy intersection of urban planning, private law, and civil rights. And honestly, Corn, it is one of the most common complaints you hear in Jerusalem right now in early twenty twenty-six. As the Green Line starts its partial operations and the city becomes even more dependent on these tracks, people are feeling harassed in a space that is supposed to be a public service.
So today, we are going to dive into the mechanics of this. Why is the inspection so aggressive? What are the legal realities of the train being classified as a private domain? And most importantly, what can the residents of Jerusalem actually do to push for a more humane, sensible system?
I have been doing some deep dives into the updated contracts between the Jerusalem Municipality, the Ministry of Transport, and the operator, Cfir. There is a lot to unpack there regarding how these companies are incentivized. This is not just about a few mean inspectors having a bad day; it is a systemic issue built into the very architecture of how the light rail is managed in twenty twenty-six.
Let's start with the atmosphere Daniel described in his note. He mentioned seeing a woman with four small children being yelled at because she had an agalah—one of those metal shopping carts everyone uses for the shuk. She was trying to balance the kids and the groceries, and the inspector was looming over her, demanding to see her Rav-Kav and telling her the cart was blocking the aisle. To a casual observer, that sounds like a minor logistical friction. But the response was totally disproportionate. It wasn't "let me help you move this," it was "you are in violation."
Right, and that is the core of the friction. The agalah is a staple of Jerusalem life. You go to Mahane Yehuda, you fill up your cart with vegetables and pita, and you take the train home. If the transit system starts treating the basic, everyday habits of the residents as a nuisance or a criminal violation, you have a fundamental disconnect between the service and the community it is meant to serve.
It feels like a clash of philosophies. On one hand, you have the city trying to reduce car traffic. We have seen the construction everywhere—the chaos of the last five years as the Green and Blue lines have been carved into the bedrock. The goal is to make Jerusalem a world-class, walkable, transit-oriented city. But on the other hand, the actual experience of using that transit is becoming increasingly hostile. It is like they built a beautiful glass house and then hired a bunch of people to throw stones at anyone who tries to enter.
It is the classic carrot and stick problem, but in Jerusalem, the stick has become ten feet long and the carrot has been replaced by a fine of one hundred and eighty shekels plus the price of the fare. If you want people to give up their cars—especially with the new congestion taxes they are discussing for the city center—the alternative has to be dignified. It cannot feel like you are entering a high-security prison every time you want to go three stops down Jaffa Street.
And the frequency of the checks is what really gets people. Daniel mentioned having his card checked three times on a six minute journey between Damascus Gate and the City Hall stop. That is not about fare evasion anymore. If you have been checked once, the system knows you have paid. Checking again and again is about surveillance, it is about maintaining a climate of "compliance through intimidation."
Well, let's look at the numbers, because you know I love the data. From an economic standpoint, the cost of employing that many inspectors is astronomical. Think about their salaries, their uniforms, their body cameras, their benefits, and the management overhead. Does the amount of money they recover from those one hundred and eighty shekel fines actually cover the cost of the enforcement? In most cities, the answer is a resounding no.
That is a great question. Usually, in public transit systems in Europe or North America, you accept a certain level of fare evasion—usually around three to five percent—because the cost of "perfect enforcement" is significantly higher than the lost revenue. So why is Jerusalem, through Cfir, doing the opposite? Why are they spending five shekels to chase down one shekel of lost revenue?
My theory, based on the research I have done into the "P P P" or Public-Private Partnership model used here, is that it might not be about the revenue from the tickets themselves. Often, these private operators have performance benchmarks tied to their contracts. But there is also a dark incentive: in many of these contracts, the private company gets to keep a significant portion of the fine revenue. If the fines are a profit center rather than a deterrent, the company is incentivized to create a system where it is easy to accidentally fail to validate.
That is a huge point. If the system is confusing—if the validation machines are slow, or if the app doesn't refresh fast enough—and the company makes money every time someone makes a mistake, then they have zero incentive to make the system more user-friendly. In fact, they have a financial incentive to keep it "glitchy."
Exactly. And that brings us to the documentation issue Daniel mentioned, which is the biggest hurdle for citizen activism. Because the light rail is operated by Cfir, they claim the interior of the train is a private domain. They often tell passengers that they are legally forbidden from filming the inspectors. They cite the Privacy Protection Law of nineteen eighty-one and subsequent updates, claiming that the train is the "private office" of the inspector.
But is that actually legally enforceable in twenty twenty-six? I mean, this is a service provided to the public, in a public space, funded by billions of shekels of public tax money. How can it be "private" when they want to stop you from filming their behavior, but "public" when they want government subsidies to build the next line?
It is a legal gray area that they exploit brilliantly. In Israel, there are strict privacy laws regarding filming people in their place of work if that work happens in a non-public space. The inspectors argue that the carriage is their workplace. If you film them, they claim you are violating their privacy and "interfering with a public servant in the line of duty," which is a criminal offense.
That sounds like a very convenient shield for bad behavior. If you cannot document the interaction, it is your word against theirs. And we know who the Ministry of Transport and the police are going to believe in that scenario. It creates a total power imbalance.
Exactly. And that is why Daniel is feeling so frustrated. He wants to make a video, he wants to show the world how that mother with the shopping cart was treated, but he is worried about the legal liability. And he should be careful—Cfir has a very active legal department that has been known to send "cease and desist" letters to people who post videos of inspectors on social media.
So if the direct approach of filming is risky, how do we move toward effective activism? We cannot just let the atmosphere of our city be degraded like this. We cannot have a city where the "public" part of public transport is a lie.
Well, the first thing to realize is that activism in twenty twenty-six is not just about viral videos. It is about data and sustained, organized pressure. If we want to change how the light rail operates, we have to move the lever where the power actually sits. And that lever is not held by the individual inspector; it is held by the Jerusalem Municipality and the National Public Transport Authority.
So, instead of filming a specific inspector's face—which gets you into that "privacy" trap—what if residents started keeping a collective, anonymous log? Imagine a public database, maybe a simple app or a shared spreadsheet, where people record the time, the station, the carriage number, and the nature of the interaction. No names, no faces, just hard data points.
That is brilliant, Corn. That is how you beat a bureaucracy. If you can show that on a Tuesday at four P M at the Central Bus Station, there were eight inspectors for one single carriage, and they delayed the train by three minutes to check everyone, that is a data point. If you have ten thousand of those data points, you have a report that the City Council and the Mayor cannot ignore.
Right. It moves the conversation from "this inspector was mean to me," which they can dismiss as an isolated incident, to "the current enforcement policy is causing systemic delays and harassing the tax-paying public." It turns a personal grievance into a documented policy failure.
And you can also look at the "Reasonableness Standard." Even though there were massive political changes regarding that concept in twenty twenty-three and twenty twenty-four, the fundamental administrative principle that a public service must act in a reasonable and proportionate manner still carries weight in the Israeli courts. Is it "reasonable" to yell at a mother for a shopping cart? Is it "reasonable" to check a card three times in one kilometer? A clever lawyer could make a very strong case that this is an unreasonable exercise of authority granted by the state.
I think there is also a "Freedom of Information" angle here. As citizens of Jerusalem, we have the right to know the exact terms of the contract between the city and Cfir. We should know if there is a "fine quota." We should know if the company gets a percentage of the "increased revenue" from fines. If they do, that is a clear, textbook conflict of interest. It incentivizes them to be as aggressive as possible because their profit margin depends on it.
I would bet my entire library that there is some form of incentive structure there. We should be pushing for the full disclosure of those performance metrics. If the public sees that the company is literally profiting from being a nuisance, the political pressure would be enormous. No politician wants to be seen as the person who sold out the dignity of Jerusalem residents to a private company's bottom line.
You know, it reminds me of what happened with some of the private parking enforcement companies in Tel Aviv and London. Once the public realized it was a "for-profit" shakedown rather than a safety measure, the laws were changed very quickly. Public outrage is a powerful fuel, but it needs to be refined into political pressure.
Exactly. But let's talk about the "private domain" thing again, because I think people are too intimidated by that. While you might not be able to shove a camera in an inspector's face, you can absolutely record audio of your own interactions. In Israel, the law is very clear: as long as you are a party to the conversation, you can record it without the other person's consent. It is called "one-party consent."
That is a huge point for Daniel and everyone else. So if an inspector is being aggressive with you, or if you are witnessing an interaction and you speak up to ask a question, you are now a party to that interaction. You can have your phone in your pocket recording the audio. That is your legal protection. It provides a record of the tone, the words used, and the duration of the stop without violating those specific "visual privacy" claims.
And if enough people do that and share the transcripts—not the audio itself, but the transcripts—you start to see patterns in the language they use. You see that they are trained to use specific intimidation tactics. That is something you can take to the press. Imagine a headline in the Jerusalem Post or Haaretz: "Leaked Transcripts Reveal Systematic Intimidation on Light Rail." That changes the game.
I also think we need to talk about the "Digital Divide" here. A lot of the people getting fined in twenty twenty-six are elderly residents or new immigrants who do not fully understand the app-based payment system or how to transfer a balance from an old Rav-Kav. The system is designed for tech-savvy twenty-year-olds, but Jerusalem is a city of grandmothers, students, and people who might not have a steady data plan.
Oh, the Rav-Kav system is a nightmare for the uninitiated. You have to load it at a specific machine, then you have to validate it on the train. If the validation machine is broken—which happens all the time because of the vibration of the trains—the inspectors often don't care. They say it is your responsibility to find a working machine in another carriage while the train is moving.
Which is absurd and dangerous! If I am a customer and your equipment is broken, that is your failure as a service provider, not mine as a citizen. But they treat it like a criminal offense. This is where the activism needs to focus on "User Experience." We should be demanding a "Broken Machine Grace Period." If a validation machine is down, that entire carriage should be a "free zone" for that journey.
That would put the pressure back on Cfir to actually maintain their equipment. Right now, they have no incentive to fix a broken machine quickly because they can just fine the people who are unable to use it. It is a perverse incentive structure that rewards poor maintenance.
So, to summarize the activism side for Daniel and everyone else listening: first, move from video to data. Use logs and audio recordings of your own interactions. Second, target the policy-makers, not just the company. The Mayor's office and the City Council members need to hear that this is a "voting issue." If they think their re-election depends on fixing the light rail atmosphere, they will find a way to rewrite those contracts.
And third, use the legal tools we have. Freedom of Information requests to see the contracts. Small claims court—or even class action suits—regarding the "Reasonableness" of the enforcement. If a thousand people file small claims for the return of their fines based on faulty equipment or lack of clear signage, the system would buckle under the weight of its own bureaucracy. The cost of defending those cases would exceed the revenue from the fines.
It is about making the cost of being a nuisance higher than the profit they make from it. It is basic game theory.
Precisely. And we have to remember that we are the ones paying for this. Our taxes, our fares, our city. We are the employers here, in a sense. The light rail exists to serve Jerusalem, not the other way around.
I want to pivot a bit to the second-order effects of this. What does it do to the "brand" of Jerusalem? We are a city that relies heavily on tourism, especially now that travel has picked up again. Imagine being a tourist from, say, Germany or the United States. You hop on the train at the Jaffa Gate to go to the market, you think you paid via the app, but you didn't see the "confirm" button, and suddenly you are being surrounded by three guys in vests yelling at you in a language you don't understand.
It is a disaster for tourism. I have seen it happen. I saw a couple from France last month who were absolutely terrified. They had validated their ticket, but it was for the wrong "zone" because the new "One Israel" fare reform is so confusing. The inspectors were relentless. They didn't care that it was an honest mistake. That couple is never coming back to Jerusalem, and they are going to tell everyone they know that the city is a hostile, aggressive place.
It creates this image of a "police state lite." And in a city that already has so much organic tension—political, religious, social—adding this unnecessary layer of friction is just bad policy. It is like the city is trying to sabotage its own success. We spent billions to build this beautiful infrastructure, and then we poisoned the well.
It really is. And you know, we talk about the "broken windows theory" in policing—the idea that if you fix the small things, the big things get better. But here, the city is intentionally breaking the windows of social trust. If you cannot trust the transit system to be fair and dignified, you start to resent the city itself. You start to feel like a subject rather than a citizen.
That is a deep point, Herman. The light rail was supposed to be the great unifier. It is the one place where everyone in Jerusalem—secular, ultra-Orthodox, Jewish, Arab, Armenian—all sit in the same space, moving in the same direction. It was a symbol of a functioning, modern, shared city. By turning it into a site of harassment, they are poisoning one of the few truly shared spaces we have left.
That is why this activism is so important. It is not just about the one hundred and eighty shekels. It is about the soul of the city's public life. If we surrender our public spaces to aggressive private enforcement, we lose something that is very hard to get back: the sense of belonging.
I wonder if there is a way to involve the businesses along the light rail line. The shops on Jaffa Street, the vendors in Mahane Yehuda. They must be seeing the impact. If people are afraid to take the train because of the inspectors, they are going to shop elsewhere. They might just stay in their own neighborhoods or go to the malls in Malha where there is free parking and no inspectors.
That is a powerful potential alliance. If the Merchants Association of Jerusalem came out and said "the light rail enforcement is hurting our bottom line," the Mayor would listen. Money talks in this city, and the business owners have a lot of influence. They are the ones who pay the high municipal taxes that fund the city's budget.
So, Daniel, there is your strategy. Connect with the business owners, start a data-driven "Enforcement Log," and use audio recordings to protect yourself. And maybe we can use our platform here to help. If you are listening and you have a story about the light rail, or a data point, send it to us. We can help compile this into something meaningful.
We could even set up a dedicated form on myweirdprompts dot com just for light rail incidents. We can anonymize the data, strip out the personal details, and present it as a quarterly report to the City Council. "The State of the Rail."
I love that idea. Let's make it happen. We have the reach, and we have a lot of listeners in Jerusalem who are feeling this same frustration every single morning.
It is about reclaiming the "public" in public transport. It shouldn't be a "weird prompt" to ask for basic dignity on a train.
Well said. You know, Herman, I was thinking about how this compares to other cities. You have traveled a lot for your research. Is this "Jerusalem style" of inspection common elsewhere?
Not in my experience, no. I mean, you look at Berlin. They have the "plainclothes" inspectors, the "Kontrolleurs," which has its own issues, but it is rarely this performative or aggressive. In many cities, like Luxembourg or parts of Germany and France, they are moving toward "fare-free" transit because they have realized the cost of enforcement and the social friction it creates just isn't worth the revenue.
Fare-free transit in Jerusalem. Now that is a radical thought for twenty twenty-six. Imagine the impact on traffic and air quality if the train was just... free.
It would be revolutionary. And if you think about the billions we are spending on building the new lines, the actual fare revenue is a drop in the bucket. Most of the funding comes from the national government anyway. Making it free would eliminate the need for inspectors entirely, eliminate the "private domain" legal battles, and make the city incredibly accessible for everyone.
But instead, we are going in the opposite direction. We are spending money to hire people to make the experience worse. It is the height of bureaucratic inefficiency.
It is a "friction-based" economy. Some people benefit from the friction—the private companies, the security firms—but the public pays the price in both money and stress.
I think one of the most effective things we can do as citizens right now is to simply be "witnesses." If you see an inspector harassing someone, don't just look away. You don't have to get in a physical fight, but you can stand there, you can watch, you can ask the person if they are okay. You can say, "I am witnessing this interaction."
The "power of the bystander" is real. These inspectors rely on the fact that everyone else is too scared, too tired, or too busy to intervene. If they know they are being watched by ten other passengers who are all clearly paying attention, they are much more likely to follow their own rules and stay professional.
It is about creating a "culture of accountability." We are all in this together. If you see someone struggling with the validation machine, help them out before the inspector gets there. If you see an inspector being out of line, speak up calmly.
Exactly. "Calmly" is the keyword. Don't give them an excuse to call the police or claim you are being disorderly. Just state the facts. "I am recording the audio of this interaction for my own protection." "I am observing that you are not allowing this passenger to explain the machine error."
It is amazing how much people's behavior changes when they know they are being observed and documented. It is the Hawthorne Effect, right?
Precisely. And in this case, we can use that psychological principle for the public good. We are the observers now.
I feel like we have given Daniel a lot to chew on here. It is not a quick fix, but it is a path forward. Activism in a city like Jerusalem is a marathon, not a sprint. You have to be persistent, you have to be smart about the law, and you have to build alliances across different communities.
And you have to keep your sense of humor. Jerusalem will always find new ways to be weird. Today it is ticket inspectors, tomorrow it will be something else. But that is why we love it, I guess. It keeps us on our toes.
I don't know if "love" is the word I would use for the ticket inspectors, Herman.
Fair point. Let's say we "appreciate the complexity" of the challenge they represent.
Spoken like a true Poppleberry.
Guilty as charged. But seriously, this is a topic that matters because it is about how we live together in a crowded space. If we cannot get a simple train ride right, how are we going to solve the bigger, more existential issues in this city?
That is the ultimate question. Public transit is the "circulatory system" of the city. If it is clogged with hostility and anxiety, the whole city feels sick. We need to clear the pipes.
We should probably mention that we have covered similar urban issues before. We did an episode on the "hostile architecture" of the new bus stops a few months back. It is all part of the same trend of making the public square less welcoming.
Oh, that is right. Episode five hundred and forty-two. If you haven't heard that one, it is worth a listen. It is about how the physical design of our city—benches you can't sit on, lights that are too bright—is being used to discourage people from just... existing in public.
It is all connected. The benches you cannot lie down on, the inspectors who won't let you have a shopping cart, the lack of shade. It is a push toward a "sanitized," controlled version of the city that doesn't actually fit the beautiful, messy reality of the people who live here.
Well, we are not going to let them sanitize us out of existence, are we?
Not without a fight. Or at least, not without a very well-documented, data-driven podcast episode and a few thousand audio recordings.
Exactly. So, for everyone out there riding the Red Line or the new Green Line segments today, keep your heads up, keep your Rav-Kavs validated, and keep your recorders running. We are all in this together.
And hey, if you have been enjoying the show, we would really appreciate a quick review on your podcast app or on Spotify. It genuinely helps other people find us, and it keeps us motivated to keep diving into these weird prompts every week.
Yeah, it really does. We love seeing the feedback and the ratings from all over the world, but especially from here in Jerusalem. It makes the living room feel a bit bigger, knowing there are so many of you out there listening to the rain with us.
Definitely. And if you have your own weird prompt, or a specific story from the Jerusalem light rail, head over to myweirdprompts dot com and use the contact form. We want to hear from you. We want your data points.
We really do. This has been a great discussion, Herman. I feel like I have learned a lot just by talking through the legalities with you.
Same here, Corn. It is always better when we put our heads together. It makes the city feel a little less daunting.
Alright, that is our time for today. Thanks for listening to My Weird Prompts. We will be back soon with another deep dive into the strange and wonderful world we live in.
Until then, stay curious, stay engaged, and keep your eyes open.
Goodbye, everyone.
Goodbye.
