Tel Aviv light rail services resume after hours-long halt due to signaling fault
Incident caused by electrical glitch comes less than a fortnight after route’s hotly awaited opening
Michael Horovitz is a breaking news editor at The Times of Israel
Light rail services were temporarily suspended in central Israel due to a technical issue Wednesday morning, less than two weeks after its highly anticipated but much-delayed opening.
Tevel, which operates the light rail in the Gush Dan region, including Tel Aviv, pointed to a fault in signaling that ensures the trains safely coordinate their movements with traffic lights and other trains on the track.
The service began running again after a five-hour shutdown while technicians repaired the network. Tevel said the issue was caused by an electrical fault the night before and vowed to investigate the matter.
The Red Line carries passengers for a 24-kilometer (15-mile) stretch from Bat Yam to Petah Tikva across 34 stations.
“I rushed this morning to the light rail in order to arrive on time to work, and was amazed to find it wasn’t working,” a Jaffa resident told the Walla news site. “There are no suitable bus routes where I live because of the light rail, so I was forced to take a taxi.”
“I waited so long for the light rail, and we really wanted to get used to using it, but it seems that after all that time you can’t rely on it. It’s very frustrating,” the unnamed resident said.
The rail launched August 18 with many hoping it would transform the highly congested roads of Israel’s center.
Work is underway on two additional lines that will triple the area served by light rail; those lines are for now scheduled to be completed in 2026 and 2028.
For many residents, one of the key issues clouding the light rail’s inauguration is that it will not run on Shabbat. Transportation Minister Miri Regev’s predecessor, Merav Michaeli, had promised that the line would run on Friday evenings and all day Saturday — a rarity in a country where public transportation does not operate on Shabbat. (An exception is in Haifa, which has a large Arab population.)
