Matzav7 hours agoDrivers heading to the Kosel in Yerushalayim can find themselves paying as much as 150 shekels for just several hours of parking, even as another garage only a short distance away charges dramatically less, according to an investigation by Emess.
With parking scarce around the Old City and vehicle access to the Kosel restricted at various times, motorists arriving in private cars are left with relatively few choices. One common option is parking near Jaffa Gate and continuing to the Kosel either on foot or aboard Superbus minibuses serving the Old City. Yet two parking garages located near each other in that area can leave drivers with strikingly different bills.
One driver whose experience was reported to Emess parked in the Karta parking garage last Thursday at approximately 12:30 p.m. and left at around 5 p.m. He was charged 150 shekels.
A review of the operator’s published rates showed that the regular Thursday rate is 37 shekels per hour, with a daily maximum of 150 shekels. As a result, someone spending only several hours visiting the Old City can reach a three-digit parking bill.
The difference becomes particularly striking when compared with the nearby Mamilla parking garage. According to information obtained by Emess, another motorist who parked at Mamilla for approximately the same amount of time paid only about 50 shekels. Mamilla also has a daily maximum of approximately 70 shekels.
That means two people visiting the Kosel for roughly the same period of time could park within a short distance of one another and have one pay more than twice as much as the other.
Karta and Mamilla are situated close together along Yitzchak Kariv Street near Jaffa Gate. For a motorist coming from outside Yerushalayim who is unfamiliar with the local parking options, however, there may be little indication that choosing one entrance over the other could result in a difference of many dozens of shekels.
From the perspective of an unfamiliar visitor, the garages may appear to be two nearby parking facilities serving essentially the same heavily visited area. The difference may become apparent only when it is time to pay.
The situation is particularly noteworthy because the two neighboring garages have been at the center of a competition dispute stretching back more than a decade.
Karta, a company created by the Israeli government and the Yerushalayim municipality to develop the Mamilla area, was approximately 74% owned by the state and 26% by the municipality. After falling deeply into debt, the company entered a lengthy liquidation process beginning in 2006-2007, with its assets subsequently sold over the years.
It was only in 2025, nearly two decades after the liquidation process began, that a creditors’ arrangement was approved, bringing one of Israel’s longest and most complicated liquidation proceedings to an end.
The history of the Karta garage contains a notable irony. When the property was put up for sale, Alrov, controlled by Alfred Akirov, submitted the highest bid, offering 110 million shekels.
The Antitrust Authority, however, blocked Alrov from acquiring the garage because the company already controlled the nearby Mamilla and David Citadel parking facilities. Regulators were concerned that allowing a single entity to control all three garages could undermine competition in the Old City area.
Following that decision, Karta was sold to REIT 1, which had submitted the second-highest bid of 107 million shekels.
It did not take long for questions to arise about whether the regulatory decision had actually benefited consumers. In 2015, after Karta raised its parking rates, Akirov criticized the Antitrust Authority and argued that a decision intended to preserve competition had instead hurt motorists.
The current pricing disparity highlights that unusual outcome. Mamilla is connected to a commercial complex that naturally has an interest in attracting visitors and therefore maintains comparatively moderate parking rates. At Karta, meanwhile, a driver can reach the 150-shekel daily maximum within just a few hours.
Choosing the less expensive garage, however, is not always possible.
Mamilla operates during limited hours, meaning that motorists arriving when the garage is closed — particularly early in the morning — may have fewer available alternatives. Karta, by contrast, operates around the clock.
For observant Jews, there is an additional concern: the Karta garage also operates on Shabbos. Central Park, the company that operates the garage, states on its website that Karta is open “24 hours” on “Shabbat and holidays,” and even publishes a separate pricing schedule for Shabbos.
As a result, an observant Jew traveling to daven at the Kosel may discover that one of the limited available parking options carries particularly high rates while being operated by a business that openly remains in operation on Shabbos.
The larger question raised by the investigation is how motorists trying to reach the Kosel can end up paying 150 shekels for only several hours of parking when a considerably cheaper garage is located nearby but is not available at all hours.
With enormous demand, a severe shortage of parking and relatively few convenient alternatives surrounding the Old City, the significant difference between the two garages has prompted questions about the pricing structure and the practical level of competition available to motorists.
Central Park defended Karta’s pricing in a statement to Emess, saying customers who use its app receive substantial discounts and arguing that its dynamic pricing system helps ensure that spaces remain available to more visitors.
“Users of the Central Park app enjoy significant discounts compared to the regular price list. On the Thursday in question, the maximum daily rate on the app was NIS 120. The Karta parking lot operates on a dynamic pricing model, which is intended, among other things, to make parking available to a large number of visitors to the Old City and Western Wall area. Significantly lower pricing would result in a small number of vehicles occupying parking spaces for many hours without allowing turnover. It should be noted that only a small portion of customers actually reach the maximum daily rate, while most customers pay less, depending on the duration of parking and the rate in effect when they enter the parking lot.”
The Yerushalayim municipality and Israel Competition Authority did not provide responses to Emess.
{Matzav.com}
JBizNews6 hours agoAs a child, Jonathan Spano had one dream: to be a military pilot. It was swiftly shattered when he learned the U.S. Navy required near-perfect eyesight to fly—a standard he could never meet. So he launched his own business instead. And it’s done so well that decades later, he’s been able to splash out millions on flying lessons and his own aircraft to fulfill his childhood dream. Now, he’s the stunt pilot behind some of Top Gun: Maverick‘s most acclaimed aerial sequences.
“I was just fascinated with airplanes; I would build little models of them, hang them from the ceiling with a fishing line in my room. And like many, many young boys, when the Top Gun movie came out, I was obsessed and wanted to fly planes in the Navy and land on aircraft carriers,” Spano told Fortune.
As he got older, the now 48-year-old CEO realized that no amount of passion, pining, or studying would set him on that career course. “I learned that you had to have better than perfect eyesight, really—2020 is kind of the minimum standard,” he said. “I didn’t meet that criteria, so that took that off the table for me… My eyesight was just not that good. I wore glasses as a kid.”
So Spano worked towards a new dream: Growing up in a “very blue-collar” family in California, he and his brother started doing traffic control work as teenagers—setting out cones and barricades for a crane company their father worked for.
“We identified pretty early on that there was demand for the services that we were providing. At that time, you could go to a company and rent some barricades, but they wouldn’t put them out for you. Or you could go to a company, and they would get the permits, but they didn’t do the other traffic control services.” So in 1995, the brothers launched a side hustle of their own, offering traffic safety—rental equipment, cones, barricades, and signs on the road, plus 24/7 emergency dispatch —all in one place.
“That continued to progress and eventually turned into an office in our great-grandmother’s garage,” he said. “The plan was never to build a national company. It was really a way to just make some money, and it just continued to grow.”
It grew a lot. Thirty years later, that company, Traffic Management Inc, operates across more than 50 locations in the U.S and, according to Spano, is the largest privately held traffic control company in the United States, making over $1 million a day in revenue. Perhaps surprisingly, that same business has quietly bankrolled Spano’s path to the sky.
“It’s funny, the business I originally started just to make ends meet has ended up funding and giving me the opportunity to live the dream that I had as a child,” Spano added.
It all started when two decades into running the business, Traffic Management’s finance chief suggested buying a small plane—both as a tax write-off and a faster way to reach the company’s growing list of locations.
“It had never occurred to me that I would maybe be able to fulfill that dream as a pilot,” he said. He bought a Cessna, learned to fly it, and started using it to save hours that would have been driving across California to visit the company’s other offices. That TK enabled the company to keep expanding its presence.
“Two offices became three offices, became 10 offices, became 20 offices in the state of California, and aviation was certainly a part of that success story.”
One plane led to another—bigger, faster, eventually a private jet, costing him a few hundred thousand dollars each step of the way. Along the way, Spano also chased a second childhood passion: filmmaking. He bought a helicopter for around $2 million and partnered with Fred North, a Hollywood aerial coordinator, to mount camera rigs on it for film and commercial shoots.
North first floated the idea that would change everything. “They’re making another Top Gun film,” Spano recalled him saying. “You should try to modify your jet to carry the same cameras that we do on the helicopter, and if you can pull it off and get it done, you could work on and fly your airplane in this next Top Gun movie.”
Spano spent roughly 18 months and, by his own estimate, well into seven figures modifying his jet—an Embraer Phenom 300—to carry two camera systems and clear FAA certification. “We pulled it off in time to have the jet work on production and fly in the Top Gun: Maverick film,” he said. Flying alongside veteran film pilot Kevin LaRosa Jr., Spano flew “a large portion of the jet-to-jet aerial sequences, including all of the aircraft carrier sequences” in the movie.
The work earned the team a Screen Actors Guild Award for stunts.
Paramount has since greenlit a third Top Gun film, with production expected to begin in 2027—and Spano is already in talks with the director. “Considering we have the only platform in the world that is capable of what it is capable of,” he said, “I’m optimistic that we will be participating in that project.”
And since building the only camera jet of its kind in the world, he’s already used it on a string of other projects: commercials for private aviation companies including NetJets, FlexJet, Gulfstream, Embraer, and Delta, plus work for the U.S. Air Force. He was also part of the team behind National Geographic’s America the Beautiful, including aerial footage of the Northern Lights over Alaska, which earned an Emmy nomination.
“I’m living proof that anything is possible, and though these things don’t happen on their own, and you have to make your dreams reality,” Spano said of his success.
His advice to anyone looking to chase their dreams? “Be bold, take risks, but you know also you have to put in the hard work and dedication.”
After all, he waited decades to turn his childhood dream into a reality instead of giving up on it—and once he finally started, he still had to squeeze the training in around a full-time job.
“I look back at how hard I worked to get to where I am while running a business and getting my license, and it’s not a matter of just getting your license. To get to where I am as an aviator, it was thousands of hours of training,” he explained, adding that he’d be up studying at 11 p.m. while his family was asleep and still had to get ready for work the next morning at 6 a.m.
“If I had to say what one of the things that was really fundamental in me being successful was I picked the things that I wanted to achieve, and I was just fearless in pushing for them,” Spano added. “I stuck to it, I just believed that I was going to get there, and I just overcame whatever obstacle was in my way.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
