At a groundbreaking ceremony for the BRT Brown Line in Be'er Ya'akov, Transportation Minister Miri Regev again rejected any near-term congestion charge. She said such a tax could only be discussed once the country is fully linked by rail and frequent buses, adding, “The treasury can decide whatever it wants, even the prime minister told me clearly that there will be no congestion tax.” Regev said she is not opposing the idea in principle, only the timing, because public transport must come first.
The congestion-charge debate has bounced between the Treasury and the Transportation Ministry for more than three years. Although there have been no recent meetings, sources involved in the project say that does not mean the plan has been shelved. Treasury officials, they say, are thinking long term and are waiting for a politically better moment, since no ambitious minister would want to impose a new levy just weeks before Likud primaries and months before elections for prime minister. They also read Regev’s position as “not no, just not now.”
The ministry previously told Calcalist that Regev opposes the charge unless commuters are first given a suitable, available and efficient transport alternative. The Treasury expects that as the light rail, the metro and BRT lines keep advancing, it will be easier to win Transportation Ministry support. But Regev has repeatedly signaled she will block implementation. In November 2025, she told the Knesset Finance Committee she opposed the charge in the Gush Dan area and was working to cancel it, warning that the tender for toll gates and the Treasury’s handling of bidders was a failure.
Regev told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to hold an urgent meeting on canceling the tax and said proceeding with the tender would leave the state exposed. “They will win and sue the State of Israel for billions of shekels,” she wrote. She has backing from the ultra-Orthodox parties, and MK Moshe Gafni of United Torah Judaism is now promoting a bill to cancel the congestion charge. Meanwhile, implementation is moving ahead: in early 2026 Electra, together with the U.S. infrastructure company TransCore, won a contract to build and operate 220 toll gates and related systems. Electra will run the project for about 20 years, and total revenue is expected at about 1.25 billion shekels, including roughly 400 million shekels for construction and about 850 million shekels during the concession.
The Treasury says the charge is meant to fund transport upgrades and the metro. Half the revenue would go to improving public transport services and infrastructure, and half to metro construction. Under the funding formula, half the metro’s cost is to come from the Treasury and half from taxes, much of it expected from the congestion charge. Officials also argue the policy will reduce traffic, citing cities such as Singapore, New York and London.
