Roads in Israel

Ayalon Highway near Tel Aviv

Road sign in Israel, with both of Israel's official languages (Hebrew and Arabic) as well as English markings

Roads have been managed by the National Roads Authority of Israel since 2003 when they took over this responsibility from the Public Works Department (PWD). Road development in the country began during the British Mandate of Palestine and in 1921 the Mandate government found an engineering branch for committing infrastructure developments, this later became the PWD.

The National Roads Authority of Israel

Founded in 2003, the National Roads Authority of Israel plan, develop and maintain most of the inter-city roads in Israel. This authority also builds and plans interchanges, bridges etc. The road length that is under control by the authority is 6,500 km. Some inter-city routes are built by concessionaires and private companies in exchange for payment from the government, without brokerage or responsibility of the National Roads Authority.

Numbering of the roads

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

National roads - numbered with one digit (e.g. Route 1, Jerusalem-Tel Aviv)

Inter-City roads - numbered with two digits (e.g. Ayalon Highway - Route 20)

Regional roads - numbered with three digits (e.g. Route 471)

Local roads - numbered with four digits (e.g. Route 8900, Safed-Rosh Pina)

Often even numbered roads run from south to north (e.g. Highway 2, Tel Aviv-Haifa). Odd numbered roads go from west to east (e.g. Highway 5, the Mediterranean Sea coast to Samaria).

As a general rule, for highways with the same number of digits, numbers 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 in the far northeast of the country. There are some exceptions to this: for example, Highway 1 runs mostly north of Highway 3.

Highways in Israel

There are 42 designated highways in Israel, of those three are Freeways, four 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 Israelis from traveling on certain stretches of these highways.

(source:wikipedia)