Rail transport in Israel

Rail infrastructure in what is now Israel was first envisioned and realized during the Ottoman period. Sir Moses Montefiore, in 1839, was an early proponent of trains in the land of Israel.[4] However, the first railroad in Eretz Yisrael, was the Jaffa-Jerusalem railway, which opened on September 26, 1892.[5] A trip along the line took 3 hours and 30 minutes.[4] The line was initiated by the Jewish entrepreneur Joseph Navon and built by the French at 1 m gauge.[5] The second line in what is now Israel was the Jezreel Valley railway from Haifa to Beit She’an, which had been built in 1904[4] as part of the Haifa-Daraa branch, a 1905-built feeder line of the Hejaz Railway which ran from Medina to Damascus.[5] At the time, the Ottoman Empire ruled the Levant, but was a declining power and would succumb in World War I. During the Ottoman era, the network grew: Nablus, Kalkiliya, and Beersheba all gained train stations.[5] The First World War brought yet another rail line: the Ottomans, with German assistance, laid tracks from Beersheba to Kadesh Barnea on the Sinai Peninsula.[5] (This line ran through trains from Afula through Tulkarm.[4]) This resulted in the construction of the eastern and southern railways.

The British invaded the Levant, demolished the Kadesh Barnea line, and built a new line from Beersheba to Gaza, allowing a connection with their own line from Egypt,[5] running through Lod to Haifa.[4] In 1920 a new company, called Palestine Railways was established, which took over the responsibility of running the country's rail network. During the British Mandate, rail travel increased considerably, with a line being built between Petach Tikva and Rosh HaAyin, and Lydda (which was near the main airport in the area) becoming a major hub during WWII.[5] Also during the war, in 1942, the British opened a route running from Haifa to Beirut and Tripoli.[4] Shortly after the war expired, the Rosh HaNikra tunnel was dug, allowing train travel from Lebanon and points north (and west) to Palestine and Egypt.[5]

Starting in 1917–18, the British converted the Ottoman 1.05 m gauge southern, eastern and Jerusalem railways to standard gauge, though not the Jezreel Valley railway and some of its branches which remained narrow gauge and thus incompatible with the rest of the railways in Palestine. The British also extended some of the existing railways and connected them with adjacent countries and built 600 mm (1 ft 11 ⁵⁄₈ in) gauge lines in Jaffa and Jerusalem. After the First World War ended, the British nationalized all railways in the Palestine mandate and created the Palestine Railways company to manage operations.

When Israel gained independence in 1948, the state created Israel Railways as a successor to the British company. During the 1947–1949 Palestine war, much damage was done to the railways in the country, especially the Jezreel Valley railway, which was not rebuilt due to financial constraints and its incompatibility with the rest of the rail network.

In the first years of Israeli independence, rail passenger traffic grew rapidly, reaching about 4.5 million passengers per annum during the early to mid-1960s, at which point traffic began to slacken due to improvements in the road infrastructure, increases in the automobile ownership rate, lack of investment in the rail network, and a continued favoring of public transportation using buses over trains. This trend reached a low point of about 2.5 million passengers in 1990, which on a per-capita basis represented about a 75% decrease from the heyday of the 1960s. Then in the 1990s, a wave of railway infrastructure development began, leading to a resurgence of the railways' importance within the country's transportation system.

Map of Israel Railways lines and stations

Approved long-term plans for passenger railways in Israel. Black signifies existing lines, red—lines under construction, and purple—planned lines.

As of 2010, the rail network in Israel spans approximately 1,000 km (620 mi), with around 250 km (160 mi) additional expected to be under construction in the early 2010s decade. The majority of the network has been double tracked, the result of extensive works which have been ongoing since around 1990 to increase capacity throughout the network.

The rail network includes the coastal railway line spanning from Nahariya in the north to Tel Aviv in the south, through Acre, Haifa (with a spur to eastern Haifa), Netanya and other cities. A small commuter line goes from Kfar Saba in the north to Tel Aviv, and connects to a freight-only line from Rosh HaAyin to Lod, part of the partially defunct Eastern railway. Plans exist to rebuild the eastern railway from Hadera to Rosh HaAyin, with a spur to Afula.

Six lines go south from Tel Aviv, including two lines to Rishon LeZion, one of which continues to Yavne with a section from Yavne to Ashdod currently under construction; a line to Ashkelon through Lod and Rehovot with a spur to the Port of Ashdod; a line to Modi'in through Ben Gurion International Airport; a line to Jerusalem, which is part of the historical Jaffa–Jerusalem railway; and the railway to Beersheba, with branches to Ramat Hovav and the Israel Chemicals factories through Dimona. The railway to Beersheba is also connected to the line to Ashkelon through the Heletz railway.

In the early 2000s, the Israeli government embarked on a major project to upgrade the existing rail network and build a number of entirely new lines. This includes rebuilding the railways to Kfar Saba and Beersheba, while converting them to double-track and constructing dozens of grade separations between road and rail. Then in the 2010s decade, rebuilding the Jezreel Valley railway and creating new lines: the Railway to Karmiel, the High-speed railway to Jerusalem, a line from Ashkelon to Beersheba through Sderot, Netivot and Ofakim, and a railway as part of the Route 531 project. Some of these projects were initiated in the 2000s but were eventually frozen, with work on some resuming in 2009–2010, when they were included in a major government plan to connect almost all cities in Israel to the rail network.

Several major railway projects are expected to be carried out starting in the early 2020s. The first involves relieving the national rail network bottleneck caused by insufficient capacity in the Ayalon section of the Coastal Railway through the addition of a fourth railroad track between Tel Aviv Central and Tel Aviv HaHagana. The overall project also includes adding two additional tracks to the Tel Aviv–Lod railway. Another major project that is slated to begin construction is a line from Rishon LeZion to Modi'in via Highway 431, with a connection to the new Tel Aviv–Jerusalem railway. This will allow direct train travel between Jerusalem and Modi'in and the southern Gush Dan suburbs. The third major project expected to commence by 2020 is the rebuilding of the long-defunct Kfar Sava–Hadera section of the Eastern railway, which will create a new north-south railway corridor in central Israel. The project also includes upgrading the existing Eastern railway section between Rosh Ha’ayin and Lod.

Longer-term plans plan call for a railway to Eilat (Med-Red[6]), a line to Arad through Nevatim and Kseifa, a line to Nazareth and continuing the Karmiel and Jezreel Valley lines to Kiryat Shmona, Safed and Tiberias.

As of December 2015, Israel Railways relies solely on diesel locomotives and DMUs. In the spring of 2010, the government of Israel voted to appropriate the sum of NIS 11.2 billion out of a total NIS 17.2 billion (appx. US $4.5 billion) necessary to implement the first phase of Israel Railways' electrification programme.[7] This phase includes electrifying 420 km of railways using 25 kV 50 Hz AC, the construction of 14 transformer stations, the purchase of electric rolling stock, and upgrades to maintenance facilities as well as to signalling and control systems (including the installation of ETCS L2 signaling throughout the network). Preliminary design for the electrification effort was conducted by Tedem Civil Engineering in the early 2000s, while Yanai Electrical Engineering was selected by Israel Railways in 2011 to carry out the detailed design of the system. In December 2015 Israel Railways announced that the Spanish engineering firm SEMI (Sociedad Española de Montajes Industriales) won the tender for constructing the electrification infrastructure.[8]

The following standards are employed throughout the mainline heavy rail network in Israel:

• Rail gauge: standard gauge (1435mm)
• Max speed: 160 km/h
• Rail type: UIC60 or UIC54 (60 kg/m or 54 kg/m), continuously welded
• Loading gauge: UIC GC
• Minimum curve radius: 190m (main lines)
• Common distance between track centers of multi-tracked railways: 4.7m
• Train protection system: PZB/Indusi
• Interlocking: Electronic (Thales LockTrac 6111/ESTW L90)
• National traffic control system: Thales NetTrac 6613 ARAMIS
• Railway coupling: Buffers and chain (locomotive drawn), Scharfenberg (multiple unit trainsets)
• Maximum gradient: 29‰
• Max rolling stock axle load: 22.5 metric ton per axle
• Minimum number of sleepers per kilometer: 1667 (mostly B70 prestressed concrete monoblock)
• Passenger platform minimum length: 300 m (some older stations use the previous standard of 250 m; new and upgraded stations: 350 m)
• Electrification: Single-phase 25 kV 50 Hz AC OCS
• Train control system: ERTMS (GSM-R/ETCS L2) – will replace Indusi

An interesting character of the current Israeli railway network is that many of the new tracks and railway stations are located in the median strip of the Israeli highway system. The first station such located was the Tel Aviv Savidor Central railway station in the median strip of the Ayalon Freeway.

A Jerusalem Light Rail tram on Jaffa Road in Jerusalem

The only light rail line in Israel is the Jerusalem Light Rail, opened in 2011. The line is 13.8 km (8.6 mi) long and goes from Mount Herzl in the west, with an extension planned to Ein Kerem, to Pisgat Ze'ev in the east, with a planned extension to Neve Ya'akov.

A major LRT network is planned for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, spanning three light rail lines for a total of 94 km (58 mi). The first (red) line will go from Petah Tikva in the northeast to Bat Yam in the southwest, with a significant portion of it underground. As of 2015 the line is under construction. The second (green) line will go from Rishon LeZion and Holon in the south to north Tel Aviv. The third (purple) line will start in central Tel Aviv, go around the city and turn east. It will split into two in Kiryat Ono and reach Yehud and Or Yehuda.

Tenders have been issued for the Haifa–Nazareth railway, a tram-train line linking Haifa and Nazareth.[9][10]

In addition, a funicular underground rail line, the Carmelit, was opened in Haifa in 1959.

The following table includes ridership statistics for heavy rail only.

The following table contains the total travelled distances for all passengers per annum.

• Lebanon – defunct
• Syria – defunct (narrow gauge)
• Jordan – proposed
• Egypt – defunct

Talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in 2004 have raised the possibility of reviving the old line from the Gaza Strip to Tulkarm and/or building a new line from Gaza to Tarkumia (near Hebron) with the aim of securely transporting people and goods between Gaza and the West Bank through Israeli territory as well as for transporting cargo to and from the Israeli port of Ashdod destined to the Palestinian Authority.[14] Another proposed line would involve the revival of the old Hejaz railway branch from Afula to Jenin.