Israel's Public Transport Validations Reach 781 Million in 2025 with Mixed Trends Across Modes

The Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics released data on public transport ticket validations from 2021 to 2025, revealing a slight increase but overall stagnation in usage across most public transport lines. In 2025, bus ticket validations totaled approximately 780.9 million, marking a modest 1.4% rise from 769.8 million in 2024. This growth is below the population growth rate and continues a multi-year upward trend from 586.2 million in 2021.

Most bus rides (82.4%) occurred on urban routes, accounting for 643.4 million validations, while intercity and regional routes comprised 15.4% (120.6 million) and 1.7% (13.2 million) respectively. Wednesday saw the highest share of bus validations at 18.5%, with Monday the lowest at 17.8%. Peak hours were between 7:00-7:59 AM with 58.7 million validations and 1:00-1:59 PM with 61.2 million.

Passenger profiles showed 26% of validations were anonymous, 25.5% by adults aged 18-64, 23.2% by youth and children, 14.1% by seniors (including 76.7 million on the Gold Rav-Kav card), and 6.5% by students. Jerusalem recorded the highest number of bus validations at 171.4 million, followed by Tel Aviv-Yafo with 81.3 million and Haifa with 54.8 million.

Light rail and other transport modes showed mixed results. Jerusalem’s light rail validations dropped 23.7% to 29.9 million due to a 14-week shutdown for connecting the central section to the green line. Haifa’s Carmelit subway saw a 7.1% decline to about 1 million validations. Conversely, the Tel Aviv metropolitan light rail experienced a sharp 21% increase to 29.9 million validations, and Haifa’s cable car rose 26.9% to approximately 1.4 million validations.