The National Infrastructure Committee approved today (Monday) to advance the Ministry of Transport's plan to build two additional tracks on the Ayalon Highway, which will open the existing rail bottleneck and enable the development of the railway network in Gush Dan and throughout the country, while increasing the speed and frequency of travel of trains.
Currently, only three tracks operate on the section that passes through Ayalon Avenue. The fourth track is currently under construction, including complex challenges of drainage and roofing of the Ayalon River. The addition of the fifth and sixth tracks will enable the realization of the goals of the strategic plan for the railway network for 2040, which aims to reach an annual target of 350 million train journeys per year – five times as many as today.
Additional tracks on the Ayalon Highway, photo: uncredited
The plan launches the planning of the tracks in the section between Shefayim and Ben Gurion Airport, which will be integrated into the railway high-speed rail network. According to the plan, the tracks will be laid in two underground tunnels under the Ayalon route. The project is expected to open by 2040, enabling high-speed connections between Be'er Sheva, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
The plan includes the construction of underground stations of the high-speed network in two complexes (integrated transportation complexes), Glilot and HaShalom, in which passengers will transfer between the high-speed train network, which will travel at speeds of up to 250 kilometers per hour, to the intercity, suburban and urban rail network.
At the Glilot complex, the high-speed tracks will meet the four suburban tracks of the train at Glilot South Station, the two metro lines M1 and M3, and the Ayalon fast lanes.
The complex will include the metropolitan area's northern bus terminal.
The second complex planned according to the decision will be peace, where the high-speed tracks will meet the railway's four suburban tracks, the two metro lines M1 and M2, and the light rail's red line.
The committee determined that in the first stage, the engineering feasibility of constructing an underground station in the Peace Complex would be examined. If it is found that from an engineering point of view it is not possible to build the station in this location, the possibility of its construction in the Savidor complex will be examined.
The two new tracks are expected to radically change Israel's transportation reality in the coming decades. This is a mega-project that includes a double track from Herzliya to Ben Gurion Airport, via Tel Aviv, about 27 kilometers long, 15 kilometers of which are in underground tunnels.
The project triples the number of trains moving through Israel Railways' main bottleneck, which is currently limited to 13 trains per hour in each direction per hour, and will enable up to 38 trains per hour in each direction. In terms of the number of passengers, the addition of tracks 5 and 6 will enable the passage of about 60,15 passengers per hour on Ayalon Avenue, compared to <>,<> today – a fourfold increase.
Minister of Transport and Road Safety (Brigadier General) Miri Regev: "The decision of the National Infrastructure Committee allows us to launch this complex and important project of building a fifth and sixth track in Ayalon. For a public transportation system to operate successfully."
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