Tel Aviv train service to resume Sunday, after being suspended last week for repairs

Full, normal service to resume across Israel by September 1, Israel Railways says, but some routes to require additional transfers until then

By ToI Staff 24 August 2025, 3:24 am

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Israel Railways workers perform repairs. August 21, 2025. (Avshalom Sassoni/FLASH90)

Train service across Israel will mostly return to normal this week, Israel Railways announced on Saturday, following disruptions and the weeklong shuttering of Tel Aviv stations due to an accident earlier this month.

On Sunday, northbound trains will terminate at Tel Aviv HaHagana, which was closed all of last week, and the Beit Shemesh- Netanya line will terminate at Lod.

The Kfar Chabad and Lod Ganei Aviv stations will reopen after they were shuttered on Friday, August 15, due to extensive damage to electric cable infrastructure.

Full service will resume on Monday, though some riders will have to make additional transfers. These temporary changes will result in modified schedules.

The HaShalom station in Tel Aviv will reopen, having been closed since Wednesday, and train service in the Tel Aviv area and across central Israel will return to normal.

The Ashkelon-Binyamina line will temporarily stop in Herzliya, and travelers going north will have to transfer trains.

The direct Karmiel-Beersheba route will not be operational, but passengers will be able to travel between the two stations with a transfer in the middle.

Transportation Minister Miri Regev holds a press conference about disrupted Israeli Railway service, in Tel Aviv on August 21, 2025. (Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90)

Train service will fully return to normal by September 1, the railway said.

Train service across central Israel was suspended on August 15, after a freight train caused extensive damage to several hundred meters of electric cable infrastructure overnight.

Then, last week, all train service through Tel Aviv was suspended as Israel Railways carried out routine maintenance work. In place of the trains, Israel Railways operated a temporary bus service between the city’s central train stations.

Some of the maintenance work carried out amid the shutdowns had originally been scheduled for September, but the rail network said in a statement that it had decided to bring it forward so as not to cause “twice as much harm to the traveling public.”

Despite the heavy disruptions, Transportation Minister Miri Regev insisted last Monday that there was “no transportation chaos,” and that the situation was merely “unpleasant.”

Her comments contradicted the opinions of Israel Railways officials, who told media outlets that the damage caused by the freight train was “a mega-event like no other we have experienced.”