The Supply of Bus Services to Arab Localities

In the past decade, the gap in the quality of public transit (bus) service between Arab and Jewish localities has narrowed, but this trend was not uniform. The quality of bus service in large Arab localities (more than 20,000 residents), which contain about half of the total population of Arab localities in Israel, is currently about one-third lower than the level in Jewish localities with similar characteristics, taking into account the number of residents, geographic characteristics, socioeconomic level, dependency ratio, and government services provided in the localities. The relative state of these localities did not improve between 2010 and 2019, and in some of the variables analyzed it worsened significantly. The second half of the population of Arab localities, not including unrecognized Bedouin villages in the Negev, lives in small localities, where the situation is different. In 2010, the quality of bus service in these localities was lower than in Jewish localities with similar characteristics, but their relative state improved between 2010 and 2019, such that the level of service in those localities is now similar to the level in Jewish localities with similar characteristics