The Red Line in Tel Aviv is part of the Gush Dan Light Rail. The Gush Dan is a metropolitan area including areas from both the Tel Aviv and the Central Districts of Israel. The Red Line light rail will connect the cities of Tel Aviv, Bat Yam, Bnei Brak, Petah Tikva, and Ramat Gan. It will link Petakh Tikva, to the northeast of Tel Aviv, with Bat Yam to the south. It will be a total of 24km in length, 11 km of which will be a tunnel from Manshiyya/Neve Tzedek to the Geha Interchange. The Red Line will have 34 stations, 10 of which will be underground. The distance between underground stations will be 1 km. Underground stations will be equipped with platform screen doors and trains on the underground section will be operated using an automatic train operation system. The line shoud be completed in October 2021, and it will be the second underground service in Israel, after the Carmelit, in Haifa. In the future the line may be extended to Moshe Dayan interchange in Rishon Lezion. Seven more lines are planned for the city.
Red Line initial construction began in 2007. In August 2010, following the collapse of the concession agreement with the MTS consortium to build the Red Line, the government has decided to push ahead with the 22 km light metro using public funds as a project of national significance. Israel’s NTA Metropolitan Mass Transit System published a tender for the design of multiple launching shafts for the TBMs that would dig the 11 km of underground tunnels for the railway. In March 2011, the shafts' construction tender was published as well, in addition to a tender for the design of the Kiryat Aryeh depot.
On 22.01.2012 NTA published a pre-qualifying (PQ) bid for the design-build contract for excavating the Red and Green lines' tunnels to be performed by several TBMs operating simultaneously.
In May 2015 NTA awarded civil works for the Red Line of the Tel Aviv light metro to the Chinese-Israeli JV composed of the China Railway Tunnel Group subsidiary of China Railway Group (51%) and the Solel Boneh Infrastructure subsidiary of Shikun & Binui Group (49%). The design-build contract value is EUR727.14million (ILS3.1 billion) which includes the boring of 11 km of 5·5 m diameter twin tunnels linked by 16 cross passages, as well as six underground stations in the western section of the Tel Aviv light rail's red line. The stations are to be designed by NTA.
In June 2015, the companies Danya Cebus Ltd and China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation(CCECC) won the 700 Million NIS tender to build the underground Carlebach station on the red line. The Carlebach railway station will be one of the largest in the Tel Aviv light rail project. It will be built on three separate levels, one for the Red Line, one for the future Green Line, and one for ticketing.
On 02.08.2016 Israel Transportation and Road Safety Minister Yisrael Katz, announced the construction of the Green and Purple lines which is set to begin in 2018. Four TBMs will build underground sections of the Red Line between Tel Aviv and the eastern reaches of Ramat Gan. Two TBMs will drive from East to West and two TBMs will work from West to East. The TBMs (274 m long, 800 t weight and 6.85 m wide) and will drive tunnels 27.43 m below the surface. One of the TBMs is already in Israel, while another one is on its way from Germany. By the end of the project, the light rail is expected to serve 70,000 people.
The Green Line, the second line to be built in the Gush Dan area, will be 39km long, 4.5km of which will be underground, with 61 stations, 5 of which are underground (Levinsky, Carlebach, Dizengoff, Rabin Square and Arlozorov). It will go from Herzliya in the north to Rishon LeZion and Holon in the south, passing through the center of Tel Aviv.
The 28 km Purple Line is designed to connect the Tel Aviv city center and the Tel HaShomer area, a neighborhood in Ramat Gan, which is in the east. The Purple Line will include 44 different stations. Construction on this line is expected to last until 2021. Click il/13 for the tunnelbuilder archive. For further information please visit http://www.nta.co.il/en/home, http://www.crtg.cn/about/crtg.html, http://en.shikunbinui.co.il/, http://www.danya-cebus.co.il/en/ and http://www.ccecc.com.cn/en/. 31/16.
