Rail transport in Israel includes heavy rail (inter-city, commuter, and freight rail) as well as light rail. Excluding light rail, the network consists of of track, and is undergoing constant expansion. All of the lines are standard gauge and approximately one-fifth of the heavy rail network is electrified, with additional electrification work underway. A government owned rail company, Israel Railways, manages the entire heavy rail network. Most of the network is located on the densely populated coastal plain.
Some of the rail routes in Israel date back to before the establishment of the state – to the days of the British Mandate for Palestine and earlier. Rail infrastructure was considered less important than road infrastructure during the state's early years, and except for the construction of the coastal railway in the early 1950s, the network saw little investment until the late 1980s. In 1993, a rail connection was opened between the coastal railway from the north and southern lines (the railway to Jerusalem and railway to Beersheba) through Tel Aviv. Previously the only connection between northern railways and southern railways bypassed the Tel Aviv region – Israel's population and commercial center. The linking of the nationwide rail network through the heart of Tel Aviv was a major factor in facilitating further expansion in the overall network during the 1990s and 2000s and as a result of the heavy infrastructure investments passenger traffic rose significantly, from about 2.5 million per year in 1990 to about 67 million in 2018.
Israel is a member of the International Union of Railways and its UIC country code is 95. Currently, the country does not have railway links to adjacent countries, but one such link is planned with Jordan. Further links existed with Egypt, Lebanon and Syria in earlier years. Unlike road vehicles and street trams, trains in Israel run on the left hand tracks.
In addition to heavy rail, several urban transport rail lines operate or are under construction in Israel. These include a short funicular underground railway in Haifa which opened in 1959 (Carmelit), a light rail line in Jerusalem (opened in 2011) and another light rail line in Tel Aviv, which began operations in 2023.
History
Ottoman Empire Rail infrastructure in what is now Israel was first envisioned and realized during the Ottoman period. In 1839, Sir Moses Montefiore was an early proponent of trains in Palestine. However, the first railroad in Palestine was the Jaffa-Jerusalem railway, initiated by the Ottoman Jewish entrepreneur Joseph Navon Bey and built by the French at meter gauge. It opened on September 26, 1892 with a travel time of 3 hours and 30 minutes.
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 as part of the Haifa-Daraa branch, a 1905-built feeder line of the Hejaz Railway which ran from Medina to Damascus. During the Ottoman era, the network grew: Nablus, Kalkiliya, and Beersheba all gained train stations. 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. (This line ran through trains from Afula through Tulkarm.) This resulted in the construction of the eastern and southern railways.
Mideastern regional rail travel: the British Mandate
During World War I, the British invaded the Levant, dismantled the Kadesh Barnea line, and built a new line from Beersheba to Gaza, allowing a connection with their own line from Egypt, running through Lod to Haifa. In 1920 a new company, called Palestine Railways, was established; it 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. Also during the war, in 1942, the British opened a route running from Haifa to Beirut and Tripoli. 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.
Starting in 1917–18, the British converted the Ottoman 1050 mm 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 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.
Israel
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.
As of 2010, the rail network in Israel spanned approximately , while around additional was 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.
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.
Electrification reached the network with the first section of the newly built Tel Aviv–Jerusalem railway in 2018. Electrification of existing lines has continued at a rapid pace in subsequent years. The long term goal is for the entire network to be electrified, a feat which only Switzerland has accomplished, but India is close to achieving at 99% electrification as of 2026.
Rail infrastructure
Heavy rail
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. Network expansion 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 began construction is the Rishon LeZion–Modi'in railway, linking Rishon LeZion and 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 call for a railway to Eilat (Med-RedMoti Bassok, Cabinet examining plan for Med-Red railway. Jerusalem could invite China to help build rail link between Eilat and northern Israel. // Haaretz, 30.01.12), 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.
Electrification 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. 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 Level 2 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.
, there are 4 electrified lines Tel Aviv–Jerusalem railway. Herzliya–Ashkelon Jerusalem–Modi'in Ashkelon/Rehovot–Netanya/Binyamina
Technical characteristics The following standards are employed throughout the mainline heavy rail network in Israel: Rail gauge: Max speed: Rail type: UIC60 or UIC54 ( or ), continuously welded Loading gauge: UIC GC Minimum curve radius: (main lines) Common distance between track centers of multi-tracked railways: 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: (some older stations use the previous standard of ; new and upgraded stations: ) Electrification: Single-phase 25 kV 50 Hz AC OCS