Highway construction in Haifa

Over the last few years, they have been gradually improving the highway system in and around Haifa. I'll talk here about a few of the projects that I am aware of.

First, there's highway 22. It was already partly in place by the time we arrived here. It's a freeway (no traffic signals or cross traffic) that starts just east of downtown Haifa, where it branches off from highway 4 and immediately crosses the railroad. It wasn't very useful at the beginning, but within the last year or so they have added a bridge across a river and back across the railroad so that one can get almost all the way to the Vulcan Junction, north of the oil refinery. It's still not so useful for us generally, but it will become much more so when it is extended past the Vulcan Junction and around the Krayot, after which it will join highway 4 just south of Akko. Construction has already started on this part, although it has a long way to go.

Another recent project was a bridge for the southbound lanes on highway 4 just south of Lev HaMifratz, in the Checkpost area. A longer bridge for the northbound lanes was already in place when we came here on our pilot trip in December of 2004.

Another exciting project recently completed is the Carmel tunnels. One has to pay a toll to use these, but it makes it MUCH easier for northbound and southbound traffic to get through the Haifa area. Instead of going all the way around the tip of Har Karmel (which juts out into the sea) and right through the middle of downtown Haifa, one can now simply go right UNDER the mountain (well, actually more like a big hill). It actually consists of 4 tunnels, 2 in each direction, with an exit and entrance between them for access to several of the upper parts of Haifa. This exit is almost right next to the Grand Canyon mall (an interlinguistic play on words -- the word for "mall" or "shopping center" in Hebrew is קניון kanyon!). We've only checked out one of these tunnels so far, the northern one in the northbound direction, so I don't know exactly what the southern connection is.

A very dramatic construction is underway right now in the לב המפרצ Lev HaMifratz ("Hear of the Gulf") area. This is at a very busy junction, where highway 75 ends at highway 4. On the other side of highway 4 is one of the 2 central bus stations of Haifa (מרכזית המפרצ Merkazit HaMifratz "The Gulf Center") and the Cinemall, formerly called Lev HaMifratz (before they expanded it with 23 theaters!), which is also a train station. They are building 2 long bridges, one for each direction of traffic, to fly right over this junction (and even over part of the bus station itself!). This will connect highway 75 (also a freeway west of the Yagur Junction) to highway 22, the one I talked about first. This will be very helpful to us in getting more quickly to downtown Haifa and, most importantly, to Rambam Medical Center. Here's a picture I shot last Sunday of the bridge, which is literally being built right over this busy intersection! The cars in the foreground are stopped at the current end of highway 75, waiting at the traffic signal for their turn to go onto highway 4: