Soon in TA: Special roller skating trail

The light train in Tel Aviv is still (light) years away, a solution to the problems of traffic and parking is not in sight and even bicycle trails are hard to come by.

But despite all this, the Tel Aviv Municipality has decided to designate special trails for roller skating that would enable riders to skate freely and safely throughout the city once a week for several hours.

The initiative was inspired by Paris, in which 25, 000 riders roam the city streets once a week at regular times. The same trend has also swept other major European cities like Amsterdam and Berlin.

According to plans, the municipality will mark a 25-30 kilometer-trail (15-18 miles) that will run throughout the city and be sanctioned and secured by the police. Every Tuesday, rollers will be allotted one lane on these central routes in which they will be allowed to skate.

The trail is scheduled to include such major streets as Ibn Gvirol, Dizengoff, Ben Yehuda, Allenby and Rothschild.

As part of the effort to regulate inline skating in the city, some of the riders will undergo a special policing course that would train them to supervise their peers and direct the traffic.

A group called Tel Aviv Rollers, which contains some 300 members, is already active in the city today, but its organized rides throughout Tel Aviv often jeopardize skaters and interfere with traffic. The new project, which will start rolling soon, is aimed at providing those riders with a safe solution that is also accepted by the police.