800 km Down, 400 to Go in Israel's Rail Electrification Push

Israel's Ministry of Transport and Road Safety and Israel Railways said on 29 December 2025 that they were completing what they called another "significant milestone in the railway electrification revolution", part of a strategic plan to link the north of the country to the centre with an "advanced, fast and green rail network".

At a discussion held that Monday at the National Infrastructure Committee, the full plan for electrifying the HaEmek line was presented. With the plan advancing, the ministry said, the entire track network on the line becomes available for electrification, as part of completing the national electric train network.

The numbers behind the programme

About 800 kilometres of track have been converted to electric operation out of a planned 1,200, according to the ministry, and roughly half of the approximately 300 trains running each day are already electrically powered. That is a substantial share of a network that reference summaries of the Israeli rail sector measure at about 1,511 route kilometres as of 2022, and a long way from where the programme started. The first electrified section opened in 2018 on the Tel Aviv–Jerusalem railway, and as of 2023 only about a fifth of the heavy rail network was electrified. The declared government objective is full electrification of the network, something the same summaries note only Switzerland has achieved.

Israel Railways, the state-owned operator of the whole network, is converting to a 25 kV, 50 Hz overhead system. Electric trains accelerate faster than diesel units, which on a line with closely spaced stations translates directly into shorter end-to-end journey times as well as lower emissions at the point of use.

What the HaEmek line plan covers

The electrification plan for the HaEmek line involves building electrical infrastructure along approximately 60 kilometres of track running east from Haifa, through the Yokneam Kfar Yehoshua, Migdal HaEmek Kfar Baruch and Afula Rafael Eitan stations, to the David Levy Beit Shean station. The ministry said running modern electric trains on the line should significantly improve service for tens of thousands of passengers in the north, shorten travel times, increase frequency, cut air pollution and noise, and make the train a more attractive alternative to the private car.

Why the north matters to the national plan

Israeli rail travel has grown steeply from a very low base (from about 2.5 million journeys a year in 1990 to roughly 69 million in 2019), but that growth has been concentrated on the coastal plain and the Tel Aviv–Jerusalem axis. Most work-related travel in Israel is still made by private car, on a road network of about 18,096 kilometres, according to reference material on Israeli transport. Extending fast electric services eastward from Haifa is what turns the northern network from a branch into part of a single system, which is the logic the ministry is invoking when it describes connecting the north to the centre.

What is still unclear

The ministry did not give a cost for the HaEmek line electrification, a construction start date, or a target for when electric trains would actually begin running on it. It did not say by how much journey times would fall, or what "tens of thousands of passengers" means as a current or projected daily figure. It also did not say when the remaining 400 kilometres of the national programme are expected to be complete.