Carmelit: Encyclopedia II - Carmelit - The Carmelit today

Carmelit - The Carmelit today

The small number of stations means that the Carmelit only serves a small part of Haifa - what used to be the important population and business centers at the time it was designed. Nowadays, the vast majority of Haifa's population does not live close to any of the stations, making it very lightly used. There have been talks of extending the Carmelit's tunnels to reach more population centers, but such an extension was never done, primarily for fiscal reasons. Instead, the most widely used public transportation system in Haifa are Egged buses which cover most of the city.

Haifa's comptroller wrote in his 2004 report (published in 2005) about the declining use of the Carmelit. According to the report, the Carmelit is used by only 2,000 passengers each day, and has been losing money ever since being reopened in 1992. The accrued losses between 1992 and 2003 are over 191 million New Israeli Shekels.

As of 2005, the Carmelit is still the only subway in Israel. There are plans for a subway or light rail systems in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, but those plans are still in the design stage (see Tel Aviv Subway).

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "The Carmelit today", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki