The other day, a friend visiting the country asked me how long it would take to drive from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The two cities are only 66.5 km. apart (a little more than 41 miles), so in theory, if you’re driving at the speed limit on the main highway, it should take about an hour.
But in reality, it often takes much longer – an hour and a half if you’re lucky, and sometimes even double that.
It’s no secret to Israelis that our country has a transportation problem. But despite public awareness, it’s not getting any better.
Today, there are over four million cars on Israel’s roads, with hundreds of thousands more being purchased every year. According to the Israel Vehicle Importers Association (I-via), passenger car registrations in Israel increased by more than 40% between 2023 and 2024 alone.
While Israelis are buying cars at record rates, the country’s transportation infrastructure continues to lag behind. There are 48 highways across the country, with more roads are being built all the time. Still, a recent study found that since 2020 (pre-COVID), the average rush-hour commute in Tel Aviv and other major cities has increased by 25 minutes.
So why is the transportation infrastructure so flawed?
ISRAEL’S ‘CAR PROBLEM’
If you were to ask Prof. Eran Ben-Elia, an associate professor in the Department of Environmental, Geoinformatics and Urban Planning Sciences at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU), he would tell you that “the problem is that the system is always favoring the cars.”
“Every time you increase the number of roads or width of the roads, you just make it easier for cars to travel,” Ben-Elia said. “And when it’s easier for cars to travel, people use their cars, and the roads fill up again very quickly. Constructing more roads is great for politics because the electorate likes it, but after a short time the roads fill up and you’re back at square one. It’s a very short-term solution.”
This phenomenon, which some experts call “the evil circle of congestion,” is rooted in decades of policy. In the 1990s, after a wave of immigration from the former Soviet Union, Israel began investing heavily in road construction. The pace of development hasn’t slowed since. According to the website Statista, 219 km. of road were widened or reconstructed in 2023 alone.
“We are subsidizing public transportation in millions of shekels, and there is no connection between the amount of money spent on the subsidy and the amount of people using public transport,” Ben-Elia said. “We are still buying cars, and every year the number is increasing. And there is never enough tarmac for these cars.”
Ben-Elia claimed that public transport has limited appeal for those who have access to personal vehicles. “When you look at the data today, who is using public transportation? The majority are older people, students, children, those that don’t have access to a car,” he said. “Those who have access to a car don’t use buses.”
THE BUSES
But why is public transport so unappealing to commuters?
“Our urban planning is really, really backward,” Ben-Elia answered. “Only now are we trying to consider a more sensible way of planning, but we’re stuck with neighborhoods that we call ‘balloons on a string.’”
This planning pattern involves neighborhoods connected by a single entrance and exit road. Buses must loop through the entire area before heading out the same way they came, creating traffic bottlenecks and long, unpleasant rides.
These North American-style neighborhoods, which have become common over the past 20-30 years, are especially prevalent in affluent areas like Petah Tikva and Kiryat Gat.
“Meanwhile, the buses don’t have enough priority as it is. We don’t designate enough bus preemption lanes, we don’t give them enough preemption in junctions or their own special signals. So they’re stuck in traffic most of the time,” Ben-Elia added.
Over 900 bus lines are operated by Egged, Israel’s largest bus company. It has 2,000 city buses, 1,000 intercity buses, and 400 long buses. And yet, buses in Israel are widely considered inefficient and unattractive. According to Ben-Elia, part of the problem is inconsistency in traffic signals across municipalities.
“We have an anomaly, which is that the local government is responsible for the signals and the color of the signals on the tarmac, so if you want to paint a yellow color for a bus lane, and this bus lane goes through one municipality that is against giving bus lanes the advantage, then there will be no bus lanes there,” he said.
THE TRAINS
There is also a significant disparity in the quality of trains servicing different cities in Israel. When you ride from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, you’ll likely find yourself on an electrified train, similar to those common in Europe: very fast, very quiet, and very efficient. But if you’re attempting to commute to Beersheba, you might be riding a noisier diesel train on a ricketier track, making lots of stops.
Israel Railways has four electrified lines servicing 69 stations, with about 600 trains running per day. And yet, according to Ben-Elia, the train network is prone to malfunctions.
“Why is this? The reason is that we have this bottleneck in the middle of the country called Tel Aviv.”
Most trains pass through the city’s four main stations – Hahagana, Hashalom, Savidor Center, and University – meaning that any disruption in Tel Aviv can paralyze the entire system. “Any little disruption in the system results in chaos,” Ben-Elia said. “If there is an incident in Tel Aviv, the entire network will go into failure.
“Additionally, the light rail was a terrible mistake in Tel Aviv,” he added. “It took us 20 years to build one light rail line in the city; 25 years later, we discovered that we need a metro, but we’ll only get the metro in 2040, in the best case scenario.”
The decision to establish the Tel Aviv Light Rail was made in the early 2000s when the government believed it had inadequate funding to build a subway. “They built the light rail in a way where the stations are too short, so there’s no way to upgrade it to a metro even if they wanted to,” Ben-Elia stated.
Additionally, the constant expansion of the light rail lines results in temporary road closures and traffic jams, which are a major disruption to city residents and, at times, threaten local businesses as well. According to Israel21c, some 230 small businesses were cut off from customers due to light rail construction on Tel Aviv’s Jerusalem Boulevard in 2019 alone.
A TRANSPORT ANOMALY
According to Ben-Elia, Israel’s transportation system is atypical when compared to those of other first-world countries.
“The problem is that we’re an anomaly in the developed world because in no other country is the public transportation system so centralized,” he said. “Every line has to be approved in Jerusalem; we don’t have a metropolitan scale of decision-making, which is a real problem.”
Transportation routes in Israel must be approved by the National Public Transport Authority, headquartered in Jerusalem. While other cities can propose changes, they lack the autonomy to implement them. “If Tel Aviv wants to start a new bus line, they can recommend it, but they can’t do it alone,” Ben-Elia said.
Israel is also unique in that it offers very limited public transportation on weekends, in observance of Shabbat. The buses and trains that do operate on the weekends are located primarily in wealthier, more secular municipalities, making the issue highly politicized.
“Imagine if public transport on weekends were like on Independence Day – there are some buses but not as much as on a normal weekday. It would dramatically change the entire quality of life in this country,” he said. “Because today, if you don’t have a car, you can’t have decent recreation or leisure on the weekend.”
THE FUTURE OF TRANSPORT
“Unfortunately, we’re more or less in the same place as we were 20 years ago,” Ben-Elia said. “If we don’t establish a public transport network, we cannot make a dramatic change. The revolution should come in 20 years or more, when the metro starts to operate.”
While the probability of establishing a metro in the near future is uncertain, in 2022, Israel signed a government-approved agreement with trans-highway franchisee Derech Eretz and government company TransIsrael to allow for the expansion of Highway 6. Construction began in 2024, with newly added lanes intended to span 120 km.
“Since I took office, I have announced that I intend to turn the pyramid upside down and prioritize public transportation and cooperative travel and the Negev and Galilee, and that is what I am doing,” said Merav Michaeli, then transportation minister, about the expansion.
Construction on Highway 6 will conclude in 2028. However, by then, the increased number of commuters in the country will likely make all the expansion and extra roads obsolete. So get ready to wait around some more to travel the country. ■
