Israel’s $50 Billion Tel Aviv Metro Bid Carries an Old Calendar

NTA opened first-round bids in February 2026 for a $50 billion Tel Aviv metro meant to carry 2 million passengers a day. The state company still names 2037 for the first trains.

That year is already a revised date. Twenty groups filed in June for the tunnels and stations, and in August NTA put driverless trains, signalling and long-term operations out to bid.

Twenty Consortia Filed for the First Dig

The public start was a three-day meeting in Tel Aviv that began on February 23, 2026. NTA said more than 550 people came, including staff from over 60 firms in about 20 countries, to hear how to qualify for the government-funded civil works.

On June 3 it published the first cut. Twenty groups made of 33 companies filed for Infra 1, the heavy digging: twin tunnels, underground station boxes, and the structures that tie street level to the platforms. The package is worth about NIS 65 billion and covers 75 kilometers of double tunnels and 59 stations, the core of line M1, all of M2, and more than half of M3.

The mix was new for Israeli rail work. Two U.S. firms appeared, which NTA said had not happened on a project of this size. Nine Indian companies filed, as did 11 Israeli firms, six Chinese firms and five from Europe.

The big response to the tender is like an extraordinary international vote of confidence in Israel and the Israeli economy, especially in the political-security reality of recent years.

Itamar Ben-Meir, NTA chief executive

NTA chairwoman Yodfat Afek-Arazi said the company had spent a year meeting builders in East Asia, the United States and Europe and had “removed barriers.” Ben-Meir also said Israeli firms in the round would learn work the state would otherwise keep buying abroad.

The network NTA is selling is fully underground: three underground lines and 109 stations over about 150 kilometers, serving 24 municipalities in Gush Dan, home to more than 4 million people, about 40 percent of Israel. Dual bores bring the tunnel length to about 300 kilometers.

THE THREE METRO LINES

On August 24 NTA opened Infra 2, a first-round call worth about NIS 30 billion for trains, track fit-out, power, signalling and running the system. Applications are due by January 18, 2027. One winner is meant to take M1. A second winner would take M2 and M3. The trains are specified as GoA4, with no driver on board, headways of 90 seconds, and operations lasting 15 to 20 years. NTA wants a train every 90 seconds to hit its 2 million daily riders. That standard also shrinks the pool of firms that can actually bid, which is why the company has been courting suppliers for a year.

Lea Shmool, an NTA vice president who runs line M3, said the civil stage is split into about 12 design-build packages for tunnels and stations, and that as many as 24 tunnel boring machines would work at once. She said NTA is keeping Israeli permit risk in-house so foreign builders are not asked to negotiate local approvals they cannot control. M3, which runs through less packed districts, is being designed by the owner and put out as plain construction, so station boxes can start sooner than on the design-build lines. Shmool told an industry interviewer in April 2026 that six M3 stations were due to start in 2027.

Main Infra 1 and Infra 2 site work is still dated toward the end of 2028 and the start of 2029. Civil tenders themselves are due from late 2026 into 2027, with awards expected about 18 months after each notice. Ben-Meir said in June that digging would start in about 18 months from then.

What the 2037 Date Covers

When NTA hosted bidders in February, an agency representative said service would begin in 2037. Afek-Arazi said in April 2026 that the first segment in 2037 was a more realistic reading of the same project. The word that matters is segment.

The original government timetable pointed to 2032. In November 2022 the steering committee set a split: partial running by 2034 and full commercial service by 2037. An internal NTA paper in May 2025 said the 2034 mark was no longer realistic and described a delay of about three years. The 2037 figure now printed on the bid decks is the first slice, about 75 kilometers, not the finished 150. Tender papers for the systems package describe a second stage opening in steps about six years after that.

THE OPENING DATES ON FILE

1. 2032: Original government target for the metro to start running.
2. November 2022: Steering committee sets partial service in 2034 and full commercial service in 2037.
3. May 2025: Internal NTA paper says 2034 is no longer realistic and describes a delay of about three years.
4. February 2026: Bidder event in Tel Aviv still names 2037 for the start of operations.
5. April 2026: NTA chair Yodfat Afek-Arazi says the first segment in 2037 reflects a more realistic assessment.

The shekel budget has moved with the calendar. A 2021 law set the programme at NIS 150 billion. The state comptroller, in a report published at the end of 2025, put the cost at NIS 177 billion and warned that tax take from building along the route could fall short of the Treasury’s forecast. NTA still presents the works to foreign firms as a $50 billion, state-backed job. Those are not the same measure: one is the legal shekel frame, one is the comptroller’s update, and one is the dollar figure on the bid brochure.

The comptroller also found a Metro Authority that had worked with a skeleton staff, stations that had to be redrawn because they were designed with a single way in and out, and a labour gap that included thousands of missing engineers and a need for large crews of foreign tunnel workers. Afek-Arazi has said NTA is looking at a bond issue or extra state cash if spending runs ahead of the taxes meant to pay for the holes, and that she does not see that gap in the near term.

The Red Line Opened Six Years Late

Gush Dan has already run this experiment at street level. NTA was set up in 1996 to build mass transit in the Tel Aviv area. The Red Line began as a private build-operate-transfer scheme. After the franchisee failed to raise money, the state took the project in December 2010 and said the line would run by 2017 on a budget of NIS 10.7 billion.

Passenger service started on August 18, 2023. The line runs 24 kilometers from Bat Yam to Petah Tikva with 34 stations, ten of them underground. NTA put the final cost at about NIS 19 billion. About 100,000 people rode on the first day, when fares were waived. Trains had been due every three minutes; they opened at six.

The missed years were not a single shock. Opening dates moved from 2017 to October 2021, then to November 2022, then through a string of 2023 promises, including Independence Day, before the August start. Auditors flagged a signalling system that failed in tests. The state comptroller found that NTA had shifted money between sections in a way that hid overruns. Avi First, then the NTA spokesman, said part of the extra cost came from working across five cities that wanted different bridges, gardens and papers.

Chinese tunnel firms and Israeli builders Solel Boneh and Danya Cebus did the civil work. Alstom supplied signalling. Egged’s Tevel unit runs the line. That is the record NTA now takes into a fully underground network several times as long, with 24 machines in the ground at once, and with Chinese firms again in the first-round list.

Purple Line Trains Reached Haifa in June

The metro is sold as a partner to light rail, not a replacement. One line is running. Two more are still being built. The planned light-rail net is meant to stretch more than 90 kilometers.

The first four of 98 CAF Urbos cars for the Purple Line reached Haifa on June 14, 2026. NTA’s own page still lists a Purple Line opening year of 2028, with civil engineering due to finish in October 2026 and trial runs after that. The line is about 27 kilometers, mostly at street level, under a design-build-finance deal with Spain’s CAF and Israel’s Shafir. NTA forecasts about 256,000 daily riders and a train every four minutes.

The Green Line is the slower sibling. It was aimed at the mid-2020s when the Red Line opened. It is still a construction site. NTA has already told the public the Purple and Green dates have slipped by one to three years, and in 2026 it was still leaning on the Green Line consortium, TMT, led by Alstom, over the pace of track laying.

Until those two lines open, four million people in Gush Dan have a single urban rail spine that does not run on Shabbat and that opened after a generation of road building. The metro will not relieve that for another decade even on the current file.

Half the Bill Rests on Future Taxes

The 2021 law did not put the whole NIS 150 billion on the state cheque. NTA’s working split is half from the state budget and half from charges that do not exist yet in full.

HOW THE STATE WANTS TO PAY

• State budget: About half the construction cost is meant to come from regular government funds, which NTA can time with some certainty.
• Congestion charge: A Gush Dan road fee, written into law in 2021, is supposed to push drivers onto trains and raise cash; its start date has already slipped more than once.
• Betterment levy: Extra building rights around and above stations are meant to be sold, with developers paying the state for the uplift.
• Municipal station tax: Local councils would pay a special tax tied to how many stations sit in their city, plus some land sales.
• Possible bond: NTA has studied a Tel Aviv Stock Exchange issue to cover the years when contractors must be paid before those taxes arrive, a model used on London’s Elizabeth Line.

The Bank of Israel flagged that timing gap in 2022. The comptroller later called it tens of billions of shekels and said the Accountant General and the Budgets Division had not written a plan to close it. Transport Minister Miri Regev, celebrating the June bidder list, still talked of 2 million passengers a day and a million fewer cars. The cars are on the road now. The charges are not.

Shmool’s answer to foreign firms worried about the region was that light-rail sites had kept working “under some constraints” and that a job of this size would still draw the industry. The June list, with U.S. and Indian names on it, is the evidence she can point to. The financing file is the part those firms cannot price from a brochure.

The First Shaft Starts at Kfar Ganim

On July 8, 2026, NTA named Minrav Group to build the first launch shaft on M2, a 35-meter pit, about the height of a 12-storey building, at Kfar Ganim in Petah Tikva. From that box a boring machine is supposed to start the east-west tunnels. Adi Kain Carni, who runs the M2 directorate, said construction of the shaft would begin the following month. M2 is planned at 26 kilometers and 22 stations, including stops at Bar-Ilan University, HaShalom, Habima, Carmel Market and Wolfson Medical Center, with a forecast of more than 500,000 riders a day on that line alone.

THE BID SO FAR

• $50 billion: The dollar figure NTA puts on the full metro programme for bidders.
• 20 groups: Consortia that filed in June 2026 for the first civil packages.
• 109 stations: All planned underground, across three lines.
• 2 million: NTA’s forecast for daily metro passengers once the system is running.

A 2022 state comptroller report found that a resident of the Tel Aviv area loses 98 hours a year in traffic. The OECD has ranked Israeli roads among the most jammed in the club, with about 72 percent of adults holding a private car. Central Bureau of Statistics figures show 459 people killed on Israeli roads in 2025, up from 439 in 2024.

The shaft in Petah Tikva is the first hole that looks like a metro. The first passenger cars are still dated to 2037, and only for the first slice of the network.