Sderot to Tel Aviv in 53 Minutes as Electric Trains Reach the Negev

Electric trains were due to run for the first time on the western Negev lines from Friday 26 September 2025, the Ministry of Transportation and Israel Railways announced on 17 September, closing what they described as a year of accelerated electrification work in southern Israel.

The change was set to cut travel times to the centre of the country by 10 to 20 minutes, extend midweek operating hours until midnight, and restore services at the end and start of the week. Journeys from Sderot to Tel Aviv were to fall to 53 minutes from one hour and six; Netivot to Tel Aviv to 63 minutes from one hour and 17; and Ofakim to Tel Aviv to 70 minutes from one hour and 28. Northbound to southbound times were given as 51 minutes from Tel Aviv to Sderot, 61 minutes to Netivot and 70 minutes to Ofakim.

The new timetable

Operating hours at Sderot, Netivot and Ofakim stations were to be extended to approximately midnight on weekdays. On Fridays trains would run until about 3 p.m., and on Saturdays from about 9 p.m., a pattern that leaves the Jewish Sabbath, which runs from Friday evening to Saturday nightfall, uncovered.

Which towns this serves

Sderot is a town of 37,239 people as of 2024 that sits about a kilometre from the Gaza Strip at its closest point. It has been a target for rocket fire since 2001, and on 7 October 2023 Hamas gunmen attacked the town itself, killing at least 20 civilians and about eighteen police officers; roughly 90 percent of residents evacuated, and by August 2024 about 90 percent of the pre-war population had returned. Netivot and Ofakim lie further inland, west of Be'er Sheva.

Rail service to this corner of the country was suspended for a long stretch of the war. The Sderot–Ashkelon line, closed since the October 2023 attack, only reopened in February 2025, according to the Times of Israel, running between 5 a.m. and 8.30 p.m. Sunday to Thursday with Defence Ministry approval. A two-part concrete wall costing about 40 million shekels was authorised to shield exposed sections, and the Israel Defense Forces called the train vital strategic national infrastructure and a central part of the western Negev's rehabilitation. Seen against that, extending southern services to midnight and back onto Friday and Saturday is a return towards normal operation, not simply a speed upgrade.

Part of a national conversion

The western Negev switch is one piece of a programme to electrify the whole of Israel Railways, the state-owned operator of the country's heavy rail network. The first electrified section opened in 2018 on the Tel Aviv–Jerusalem line, and as of 2023 about a fifth of the network had been converted, according to reference summaries of the sector, which also record national ridership rising from about 2.5 million journeys in 1990 to roughly 69 million in 2019. Electric units accelerate harder out of stations than diesels, which is where most of the saved minutes on a stopping service actually come from.

What the announcement did not say

The ministry did not give a service frequency for the new electric trains, a cost for the year of electrification work, or a passenger forecast for the three southern stations. It did not say whether the extended hours depended on continuing security approvals, and it gave no detail on rolling stock.