Tel Aviv Light Rail

The Tel Aviv Metropolitan Area Mass-Transit System is a planned mass transit system for the Tel Aviv Metropolitan Area. The system will include different types of rapid transit like light rail (which will run underground in some areas), bus and more.

Work on the Red Line, the first in the project, started on September 21, 2011, following years of preparatory works and numerous delays. The Red line is planned to open in 2021. Both the Green and Purple lines will start construction in 2018 and are planned to open in 2024.

The first proposals for a tramway in the area were made by the Lebanese engineer George Franjieh in November 1892, about nine weeks after the inauguration of the Jaffa–Jerusalem railway. The plan called for a main line between southern and northeastern Jaffa, with spurs to the harbor and the eastern orchards. The plan was considered uneconomical and was shelved. A later plan called for a light railway from Jaffa to the nearby settlements of Rishon LeZion, Petah Tikva and Wilhelma.

A Decauville light railway was built in Jaffa and Tel Aviv in World War I, connecting the port with the Yarkon River. It was used for about a decade after the war, and dismantled at a later date.

A subway system was first planned in the mid-1960s, and in 1967 a station at the Shalom Meir Tower was inaugurated in the presence of then Prime Minister Levi Eshkol. However, financial difficulties forced the abandonment of the project, and Shalom Meir remains the only subway station in Tel Aviv, disconnected from other transport links.

In 2000, the plan for a subway was changed to one for light rail, and more plausible plans for a mass transit system in Tel Aviv were unveiled. The first 22 kilometres (14 mi) Red Line has been approved, and excavation began in late 2009, with construction of the underground stations beginning in August 2015. The Red Line is expected to become operational in 2021.

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Wikipedia