Highway 20 (Israel)

Highway 20, more commonly the Ayalon Highway (Hebrew: נתיבי איילון‎, pronounced: "Netivei Ayalon", lit. "Ayalon Routes"), is a major intracity freeway in Gush Dan, Israel. The road runs along the eastern border of central Tel Aviv from north to south (with a planned east-west branch as well) and connects all of the major highways leading to the city—such as Highway 4 from Ashdod and the Southern regions, Highway 2 from Haifa and the Northern regions, Highway 5 from the East, and Highway 1 from Jerusalem and the Southeast. The Ayalon Highway is heavily travelled and on an average day almost 600,000 vehicles enter the freeway. It consists of a multi-lane highway with a multi-track railway located between the opposite travel lanes. Some of the highway's route is along the Ayalon River, hence its name.

Background

Before the construction of the Ayalon Highway, all the major inter-city highways leading to Tel Aviv terminated in the outskirts of the city. This created major traffic congestion in the entry and exit points and made driving through the city very difficult. Moreover, before the highway, Tel Aviv had two separate railway stations, one in the north and one in the south, which were not connected. Thus passengers wanting to travel to the South of the country could only do so from the southern station and those who wanted to travel to the North could only do so from the northern (Central) station. Even worse, trains from the northern part of the country could not travel to the southern part of the country without bypassing Tel Aviv from the east, making train travel in Israel very inefficient. Finally there was the problem of the Ayalon River, which went through parts of Tel Aviv and would sometimes cause flooding.