Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and Transportation Minister Yisroel Katz recently officially opened Route 38, a seven mile highway linking Beit Shemesh to the highway to Yerushalayim.
The former road was dangerous and too narrow to accommodate the rapid growth of the city, which has become one of Israel’s new religious centers.
“Beit Shemesh, which began as an immigrant tent-town, now numbers a hundred thousand people and what we did today with Route 38 will turn it into a city of a quarter of a million,” Netanyahu said. “In 2009, I said that I want to interconnect the State of Israel… It is unbelievable that Beit Shemesh is so close and yet difficult to reach from Yerushalayim and Tel Aviv due to lack of basic infrastructure.”
{Matzav.com Israel News Bureau}
This article is misleading.
Highway 38 is not a new alternate route. It’s the same old highway. They just finally finished changing the highway from one lane in each direction to two lanes in each direction. Now the daily traffic jams are only slightly smaller than they used to be.