Carmel Tunnels 2.75

The Carmel Tunnels are a set of road tunnels in Haifa, Israel. The tunnels' purpose is to reduce road congestion in the Haifa area and to provide an alternate route of reaching the eastern and central parts of the city, Haifa Bay and the Krayot area to and from Israel's central coastal plain without having to travel through traffic-congested downtown Haifa, having to drive up and across Mount Carmel or bypassing Haifa from the east, along the edge of the Jezreel Valley . The tunnels cut the travel time from the Haifa South interchange in the west to the Checkpost interchange in the east from 30–50 minutes down to 6 minutes.The toll tunnels were built and are operated as a BOT project. They were opened to traffic on 1 December 2010.OverviewThe entire project is 8.6 km long. There are four tunnels (two sets of twin tunnels), the 3.5 km long western set and the 1.6 km long eastern set, containing two lanes of traffic in each tunnel. The tunnels were bored in Mount Carmel, essentially under the city of Haifa and have three portals: one from the west, near the MATAM business park (with a connection to the Coastal Highway and the Old Haifa–Tel Aviv Highway), one in the center off Rupin Road (next to the Grand Canyon Shopping Mall), and from the east connecting to the Krayot (aka the "Checkpost") interchange and Highway 22 at the Yadin/Mevo Carmel interchange.