As one of the most densely populated countries in the world, Israel has begun to realize that rapid railway links are the only answer to ever lengthening traffic jams.
By Simon Griver
More than a century ago, the railway began to compete with the camel, donkey and horse in the Land of Israel when the Ottoman authorities completed the Jaffa-Jerusalem line in 1892. Cutting inland from the Mediterranean coast through the Judean Hills to Jerusalem, the new line reduced the traditional route from three days to just three hours. In 1914, a more ambitious project was completed, with German help: the Hejaz railway which linked Damascus with Medina in Saudi Arabia, with branch lines running from Haifa and Akko through the Jezreel Valley to Be'er Sheva in the south.
After 1917, the British Mandatory Authorities further developed the railways. A coastal line was built linking Tel Aviv-Jaffa with Haifa, extending north to Beirut and south to the Suez Canal. However, while the railways served the British establishment, the growing Jewish population in new towns and villages was left outside the network. To address this problem, the Egged Bus Cooperative was founded in 1933. For the next 15 years, the buses were viewed as the "Jewish" form of transport, while the railways belonged to the British. This was one of the major factors which inhibited the development of the railways after independence in 1948. The sole exception was the opening of the Carmelit in the 1950s, a "subway" climbing Haifa's Mount Carmel, which was in fact little more than an underground cable car.
By the late 1950s, the tendency worldwide was to close down railways in favor of the motorcar and improved highways. While Israel had few railways to close down, the global trend consolidated Egged's position and the bus as the national form of public transport. Even the escalating price of fuel in the 1970s and the growing awareness of the environmental advantages of railway transportation did not erode the primacy of the bus in Israel. Today Egged remains the third largest bus-company in the world, and Tel Aviv boasts the world's largest bus station.
But a change is afoot. With over a million new immigrants from the former Soviet Union settling in Israel in the past decade, and increasing prosperity doubling the number of cars on the roads, Israel's smog-misted highway system reached breaking point.
Several years ago, the government took a strategic decision to develop the railway infrastructure. Government subsidies were introduced for the first time in 1999. In the same year, railway use rose by 40% to nine million passenger journeys, and is expected to climb by a similar percentage in 2000. This is still a drop in the ocean in a country of 6.2 million people but according to Amos Uzani, general manager of Israel Railways, train transportation is on the verge of a breakthrough. New and upgraded lines, additional stations on existing lines and improved rolling stock as well as advertising campaigns have all attracted a public that is reluctant to relinquish their private cars, or are in the habit of traveling by bus.
"Israel Railways has become the preferred alternative for public transit travel," claims Uzani. "Since 1995 the number of passengers using trains has more than doubled." Freight transport also increased by 8% during 1999 to 10,177 tons, though for the first time in Israel's history passenger trains outnumbered freight trains in that year.
Last year new lines were opened to Be'er Sheva, and to Petah Tikvah and Rosh Ha'ayin in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area. Small investments like a footbridge from Tel Aviv Central Station to the nearby Diamond Exchange office complex have increased the number of passengers by hundreds of thousands. A new station on the Tel Aviv-Haifa line was recently opened at Tel Aviv University with an underground link to both the University and the nearby exhibition grounds. New rolling stock about to be acquired will include double-decker cars and tilting trains for faster services.
Meanwhile, the old Tel Aviv-Jerusalem line has been closed and a new more rapid link-up is planned, which will pass through Ben Gurion International Airport and the new city of Modi'in. A subway system for Tel Aviv and an urban light railway for Jerusalem are also scheduled for completion in the coming years, as more and more Israelis let the train take the strain.