Israel has a well-developed road network spanning the entire country. This network is undergoing constant improvement and expansion to accommodate the rising number of vehicles on its roadways, reduce commute times, and facilitate the outward de-concentration of residential, business, and government centers north and south of the country's center.

The National Roads Authority of Israel

Founded in 2003, the National Roads Authority of Israel plans, develops and maintains most of the inter-city roads in Israel. This authority also builds and plans interchanges,

bridge A bridge is a structure built to Span (engineering), span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or railway) without blocking the path underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, whi ...

s etc. The road length that is under control of the authority is approximately 6,500 km long. Some inter-city routes are built by concessionaires and private companies in exchange for payment from the government, outside of the responsibility of the National Roads Authority, while others are developed and maintained by regional or municipal road authorities. The National Roads Authority of Israel took over the responsibility for most of Israel's intercity roads from the Public Works Department (PWD) in 2003. Modern road development in the country began during the British Mandate of Palestine. In 1921 the Mandate government founded an engineering branch for carrying out infrastructure projects, this later became the PWD, which later evolved into the National Roads Authority of Israel. In ancient Israel the development of an unpaved yet extensive road system has been attributed to efforts under King Solomon (Herzog and Gichon, 1978, p. 121).

Numbering of the roads

Roads in Israel are categorized as national roads, inter-city roads, regional roads and local roads: ISR-FW-6

National roads – numbered with one digit (e.g. Route 1,

Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...

Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( or , ; ), sometimes rendered as Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and usually referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the Gush Dan metropolitan area of Israel. Located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline and with a popula ...

)

Inter-City roads – numbered with two digits (e.g. Highway 10 (Israel) – Route 10) ISR-HW-293

Regional roads – numbered with three digits (e.g. Route 293) ISR-HW-4111

Local roads – numbered with four digits (e.g. Route 8900,

Safed Safed (), also known as Tzfat (), is a city in the Northern District (Israel), Northern District of Israel. Located at an elevation of up to , Safed is the highest city in the Galilee and in Israel. Safed has been identified with (), a fortif ...

- Rosh Pinna) Often

even number In mathematics, parity is the property of an integer of whether it is even or odd. An integer is even if it is divisible by 2, and odd if it is not.. For example, −4, 0, and 82 are even numbers, while −3, 5, 23, and 69 are odd numbers. The ...

ed roads run from south to north (e.g. Highway 2,

Haifa Haifa ( ; , ; ) is the List of cities in Israel, third-largest city in Israel—after Jerusalem and Tel Aviv—with a population of in . The city of Haifa forms part of the Haifa metropolitan area, the third-most populous metropolitan area i ...

). Odd numbered roads go from west to east (e.g. Highway 5, the

Mediterranean Sea The Mediterranean Sea ( ) is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the east by the Levant in West Asia, on the north by Anatolia in West Asia and Southern Eur ...

coast to

Samaria Samaria (), the Hellenized form of the Hebrew name Shomron (), is used as a historical and Hebrew Bible, biblical name for the central region of the Land of Israel. It is bordered by Judea to the south and Galilee to the north. The region is ...

). As a general rule, for highways with the same number of digits, numbers rise from south to north, and from west to east. Thus, Highways 12 and 13 are located in the far south of Israel, whereas Highways 98 and 99 meet near

Mount Hermon Mount Hermon ( / ALA-LC: ('Mountain of the Sheikh', ), , ) is a mountain, mountain cluster constituting the southern end of the Anti-Lebanon mountain range. Its summit straddles the Lebanon–Syria border, border between Syria and Lebanon a ...

in the far northeast of the country. There are some exceptions to this: for example, Highway 1 runs mostly north of Highway 3.

List of highways in Israel

There are 47 designated highways in Israel, of those six are

Freeway A controlled-access highway is a type of highway that has been designed for high-speed vehicular traffic, with all traffic flow—ingress and egress—regulated. Common English terms are freeway, motorway, and expressway. Other similar terms ...

s, six are partially freeways and partially expressways and 35 are expressways. Two of the expressways are divided into separate sections as a result of an IDF decree forbidding

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

is from traveling on certain stretches of these highways.

External links

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The Roads of Israel - informational website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Roads In Israel

The National Roads Authority of Israel

Numbering of the roads

List of highways in Israel

See also

External links