I have mentioned in the past traveling to the northern town of Karmiel, where my company has a very big factory. It has always been very hard to get there, and the journey takes several hours, depending on where someone collects me from the railway. Over the past few years, Israel Railways has been building a new line to Karmiel (obviously for the benefit of the residents in the area, not for me), which was opened a few days ago. As it happens, I had to go to Karmiel yesterday, so I was able to travel on the new line.
Obviously it is more comfortable than before - people used to pick me up either in Haifa or Akko and then take me to Karmiel by car; I would suffer during this journey from the heat - but in a sense, all that has happened is that the problem stage has been moved from Haifa/Akko to Karmiel. The train station is about 6 km from where the factory is, so someone has to collect me from the new station and take me to the factory, which is on the other side of Karmiel. Yes, there are buses, but these are much slower than a car. The journey itself took 3 hours going and 2.5 hours coming back (I had to change trains twice when going but only one coming back, and the second train arrived two minutes after the first train dropped me in Tel Aviv) so there is definitely a saving of time here. But most of those savings were lost in waiting for someone to collect me in the morning or take me to the station in the afternoon. These are problems which will have to be resolved.
The station in Karmiel is luxurious and well-planned - they don't have a problem of space! I was pleasantly surprised to see many people traveling on this line: people have adopted it immediately.
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