Sharon Railway

Sharon Railway () is a 12 km double-track railroad in the Sharon plain area of

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 ...

, located in the median of Highway 531. It serves as a connection between the

Coastal Railway The Coastal railway line () is a Main line (railway), mainline railway in Israel, which begins just south of the Lebanon-Israel border on the Mediterranean coast, near the town of Nahariya in Northern Israel and stretches almost the entire Mediter ...

and the Eastern Railway and runs parallel to the Yarkon Railway which is located approximately 7km to the south. In the vicinity of Ra'anana South interchange (where Highway 531 meets Highway 4), the Sharon Railway passes through a 1.8km long tunnel. The construction of both the highway and the railway started in the early 2000s, and the first station on the new line, Kfar Saba–Nordau, opened on 13 April 2003. The second station, Hod Hasharon Sokolov, opened on 2 September 2006. Two additional stations, Ra'anana South and Ra'anana West, opened on 3 July 2018 as part of a larger construction project to extend Highway 531 to the Coastal Highway. The project also included quadruple-tracking the section of the Coastal Railway between

Tel Aviv University Tel Aviv University (TAU) is a Public university, public research university in Tel Aviv, Israel. With over 30,000 students, it is the largest university in the country. Located in northwest Tel Aviv, the university is the center of teaching and ...

and

Herzliya Herzliya ( ; , / ) is an affluent List of Israeli cities, city in the Israeli coastal plain, central coast of Israel, at the northern part of the Tel Aviv District, known for its robust start-up and entrepreneurial culture. In it had a populatio ...

, which previously consisted of double-track since the late 1980s. The connection to the Coastal Railway opened on 5 July 2020, with hourly service between Kfar Saba–Nordau and Herzliya. Eventually, the service frequency is expected to be increased and extended to Tel Aviv, making it possible to reduce the travel time between

Ra'anana Ra'anana () is an affluent city in the southern Sharon, Israel, Sharon Plain of the Central District (Israel), Central District of Israel. It was founded in 1922 as an American-Jewish settlement, 1 km south of the village of Tabsur, where a ...

and Tel Aviv Savidor Center from 40 to 20 minutes. Works to electrify the railway began in the fall of 2020 and were completed in late 2021. Standard-gauge railways in Israel {{Israel-struct-stub