Tel Aviv Purple Line receives its first light-rail trams

The first light-rail vehicles for Tel Aviv's Purple Line have arrived in Israel, a milestone for one of the metropolitan area's largest public-transport projects. Railway Gazette reports that the initial four of a planned 98 trams reached the port of Haifa from Spain on the evening of 14 June.

The five-section Urbos low-floor trams are being produced by the Spanish manufacturer CAF at factories in Spain and at Newport in the United Kingdom. The Purple Line is being built by a joint venture of the Israeli construction company Shafir and CAF under a design, build and finance public-private partnership concession that also includes 25 years of maintenance.

According to the report, the project's promoter, NTA Metropolitan Mass Transit Systems, said the arrival of the first vehicles marks the transition from the infrastructure and systems phase of the scheme to testing and preparations for the planned opening in 2028. NTA framed the delivery as the result of extensive planning and continuous work aimed at making public transport across the metropolis faster and better connected.

The 29-kilometre Purple Line will start at the Terminal 2000 complex next to Israel Railways' Savidor station and run on-street in a loop around the western side of the Tel Aviv city centre. From there it will head east to the Sheba Medical Centre, where the route splits into two branches. The northern branch will serve Kiryat Ono and terminate at Bar-Ilan University, while the southern branch will run through Tel Hashomer and Yehud-Monoson to Hataiasim.

Once in service, trams are scheduled to run every four minutes, and NTA expects the line to carry about 260,000 passengers per day. The Purple Line is one of several rail projects reshaping mobility across the Tel Aviv metropolitan region, complementing the already-operating Red Line and the planned underground metro network.

For residents and commuters, the delivery of rolling stock is a tangible sign that the long-running construction programme is moving toward passenger operations. The trams will now undergo an extended period of testing and commissioning before the line opens, a standard step for new light-rail systems intended to validate safety, signalling and reliability ahead of revenue service.

Sources: railwaygazette.com.