Israel Railways Wants to See What Lies Beneath Its Own Tracks

Israel Railways and the Israeli startup Exodigo showed a new artificial-intelligence-driven remote sensing platform for mapping underground infrastructure at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, according to the announcement of 8 January 2026.

The system has been adapted so that it can be deployed on Israel Railways' own railcars. It creates multi-dimensional digital models intended to give accurate, high-quality information about existing infrastructure, with the aim of streamlining maintenance and development work and minimising disruption to services. Acting chief executive Avi Elmalich said: "The results presented by Exodigo demonstrate significant potential, not only for Israel Railways, but also for railway operators worldwide." Exodigo's chief executive, Jeremy Suard, said the technology allows systematic mapping of rail assets and future AI integration to improve service efficiency.

The problem being solved is expensive and invisible

Nobody knows exactly what is buried under a railway. Utilities, foundations and old works accumulate over a century of construction, and the records are incomplete. Exodigo, which sells subsurface intelligence to infrastructure owners, says on its own website that it uncovers utilities, foundations and geotechnical conditions beneath complex projects "without ever breaking ground", combining multi-sensor fusion, proprietary technology, artificial intelligence and a team of engineers and geophysicists.

The company puts numbers on the cost of getting this wrong. It states that a utility strike happens somewhere in the United States every 62 seconds, that damage-prevention failures waste an estimated 61 billion dollars a year, and that more than 70 percent of projects run late because of preventable underground conflicts. Its published customer list includes transport agencies such as LA Metro, Caltrans and Kansas DOT alongside utilities and international clients.

Why a railcar is a good sensor platform

Surveying a live railway the conventional way means track closures and night shifts: precisely the disruption the system is meant to avoid. Mounting the sensors on rolling stock that is already running the route lets an operator collect subsurface data during ordinary movements rather than shutting a line to do it. That is the operational logic behind adapting the platform for railcars in the first place.

The network it would be mapping

Israel Railways is the state-owned operator of the country's entire heavy rail network, which reference summaries put at roughly 1,511 route kilometres as of 2022, carrying about 69 million passengers in 2019 after decades of growth from a low of 2.5 million a year in 1990, according to sector reference material. Much of that network runs through the densely built coastal plain, where buried services are thickest.

The venue was not incidental either. CES is owned and produced by the Consumer Technology Association and held each January in Las Vegas, according to the show's organisers; it has become a standard shop window for Israeli deep-tech companies looking for international customers.

What the announcement did not say

Neither party disclosed the value or length of the arrangement, how many railcars would carry the sensors, or how much of the network has been surveyed so far. The statement did not describe which sensing methods the platform fuses, nor did it give any accuracy figure for the models it produces. It also did not say whether the deployment is a trial or a full rollout.