History
Haifa Bat Galim Railway Station was built in 1975, along with Haifa Bat Galim Central Bus Station as part of a large public transport center between the main highway which runs through the city (Highway 4 ) and the Bat Galim neighborhood. The station soon became Haifa's main railway station, largely thanks to its vicinity to the central bus station.
The station was constructed with a fairly large station hall, two side platforms and three parallel rail tracks (the middle one used for freight trains bypassing passenger trains stopped at the station). The station also has a pedestrian tunnel connection the two platforms and extending to the central bus station and then to the other side of HaHagana Boulevard (some 220 m).
During the late 1990s the Haifa - Kiryat Motzkin Suburban Service was established and Haifa Bat Galim Railway Station was its southern terminus. In order to accommodate the suburban trains a new short bay platform named '1A' was built. With the construction of Hof HaCarmel Railway Station, which replaced Haifa Bat Galim Railway Station as the southern terminus, platform 1A became unused.
In the early 2000s the station was updated to the preset passenger station format of Israel Railways and was superficially renovated, leaving much of the 30-year-old wear-and-tear in place.
The station's decline, as did its ascent, is attributed to the adjacent central bus station. In a plan to ease traffic congestion in downtown Haifa most of the regular bus traffic was rerouted so that it starts and ends at the newly constructed central bus stations at the outskirts of the city (northbound buses terminate at Mifratz Central Bus Station as of January 1, 2001 and southbound buses terminate at the Haifa Hof HaCarmel Central Bus Station as of fall 2003). This plan made the Haifa Bat Galim Central Bus Station virtually deserted, with only a few city bus lines passing through it. The sharp decline in passenger number at the central bus station greatly affected passenger traffic at Haifa Bat Galim Railway Station as well, making it a large station with very few passengers.
During the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict train service to the station was suspended after a Hezbollah Katyusha rocket hit a train depot in Haifa on July 16, 2006, killing 8 Israel Railways workers. It was restored 29 days later, on August 14, two days after the ceasefire went into effect.
Read more about this topic: Haifa Bat Galim Railway Station
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