Transportation and Treasury Ministries Agree on 2026 Budget

The Ministry of Transportation and the Treasury have finalized the 2026 budget. The budget includes measures to improve service in public transportation, ease licensing, develop tracks, and promote competition in the automotive sector. The agreements were signed after a series of continuous discussions that lasted until the budget was finalized, led by Minister Miri Regev and the Director General of the Ministry, Moshe Ben Zaken.

The agreement puts the needs of the public at the center and promotes steps that will take effect during the coming year. The budget allows for a reduction in travel costs, infrastructure upgrades, service expansion, and the continued promotion of smart transportation throughout the country.

Transportation Minister Miri Regev: "We continue to connect Israel. The budget agreement is a significant step towards building a connecting, accessible, and advanced transportation system. We led a budget rich in investment and in the fight against the cost of living. Easing licensing and tests will save citizens time and money. We stopped the increase in public transportation, we obtained budgets for the continued development of infrastructure and service improvement."

The main steps included in the 2026 budget:

- Public transportation prices will not increase and the existing benefits and discounts in the 'Transportation Justice' reform will continue.

- Huge savings for car owners: during the first ten years of the car only three tests, in the fourth year, and after it every two years.

- Cancellation of the internal test for driving students: bureaucratic relief and financial savings for hundreds of thousands of young people.

- Establishment of a dedicated team to formulate solutions for taxi drivers towards the introduction of Uber service and the like.

- Transfer of the disability tag eligibility system to the responsibility of the National Insurance: shortening bureaucratic procedures and providing fast and efficient service to people with disabilities.

- Promoting competition in car import: a new model will be operated that will limit the multiplication of brands among large car importers, with the aim of breaking the concentration of the five importers holding about 70% of the car market. The model will create competition, expand the variety of brands and lead to a reduction in car prices in Israel.

- 350 million shekels to implement the national road safety plan: expanding educational and explanatory activities, developing technological capabilities to increase road user safety and upgrading the enforcement system.

- Billions of shekels for the paving and upgrading of national roads and infrastructure and development: promoting new tracks, upgrading national and metropolitan roads, a dedicated budget for upgrading the roads of the periphery and the north of the country, electrifying public transportation terminals, continuing the deployment of traffic management technologies and improving the passenger experience, including investments of tens of billions of shekels in infrastructure for heavy and light trains.

- Upgrading the capital of Israel: extending the lines of light trains, promoting a mass transit system in the Jerusalem metropolis, budgeting the Western Wall cable car project and improving service at train stations, such as adding elevators and additional entrances.

- Fast tracks in Be'er Sheva-Natbag: establishing two fast tracks as part of the 'Connecting Israel' program, including upgrading the Be'er Sheva station and budgeting for the completion of availability for doubling the tracks.

- Israel Railways projects: completing an estimate for doubling the fast tracks between Haifa and Shfayim, completing an estimate of the fourth track, investing tens of billions of shekels to connect Israel in the north-south-center and Judea and Samaria railway network.

- Additional services in public transportation: hundreds of millions of shekels to increase frequency, add tools for mass transit, extend operating hours, launch new lines and reinforce high-demand lines.

- Investment in Arab society: promoting development plans and dozens of infrastructure projects.

- Innovation in public transportation: for the first time in Israel, a budget for promoting an urban monorail (monorail).

- An investment of more than ten billion shekels to promote and improve service in public transportation and develop mass transit.

- A dedicated budget for the implementation of artificial intelligence-based systems in transportation in Israel.