A small claims court in Kfar Saba has ruled that a public transportation company may not skip a bus stop on the grounds that another bus on the same line is following close behind. It ordered the operator Metropoline to pay NIS 200 to a passenger left waiting at a Tel Aviv stop during a winter storm.
Small Claims Court Ruling
Court: Buses May Not Skip Stops in the Rain
A Kfar Saba small claims court ordered Metropoline to pay NIS 200 to a passenger whose bus drove past his stop during a winter storm in Tel Aviv.
Senior Registrar Reut Ziv issued the ruling. The incident took place around midday on a stormy day in December 2025, when the plaintiff was trying to catch Line 24 from the Carmelit terminal toward the Allenby-Rothschild light rail station.
According to the passenger, he had waited a long time in the rain when he saw a bus approaching and signaled the driver to stop. The bus drove past without slowing down. Seconds later, when it stopped to give way at a nearby traffic circle, he tried to get the driver's attention, without success.
Metropoline offered him NIS 100 in compensation. He turned it down and sued for NIS 2,500.
In court, the company said a storm had hit the greater Tel Aviv area that day, causing flooding and severe traffic disruption. It said the bus had left 19 minutes late, running at the same time as the next scheduled trip. According to Metropoline, the first driver did not stop because he assumed the bus right behind him would pick up the waiting passengers.
Ziv drew a clear line between the delay and the skipped stop. She accepted the company's argument that the storm justified the late departure. She also found that the driver acted properly when he refused to open the doors at the traffic circle, which is not a designated boarding point, for safety reasons.
On the skipped stop itself, however, she rejected Metropoline's position. She ruled firmly that the driver's assumption that another bus would do the job did not release him from his duty to stop. The ruling stressed that a passenger forced to wait in pouring rain while a bus passes him by is entitled to compensation for distress and inconvenience. That holds even if he presents no receipts for alternative transportation.
The case comes amid ongoing complaints about canceled trips on Israel's public transportation, an issue that has drawn criticism in recent years. According to a report by the National Public Transport Authority, Metropoline held the worst record in the industry in the first half of 2024, with 3% of its scheduled trips not carried out.
Uri Maklev, then deputy minister for chareidi development, previously spoke out sharply on the issue. At a ceremony marking Metropoline's launch of service in the chareidi city of Elad, he voiced anger over the many complaints from residents that trips funded by the Transportation Ministry were not being run. "They have excuses, but we don't want that," he said at the time. "A trip that was budgeted must be carried out."
According to Kikar HaShabbat, the ruling makes clear that public transportation companies must provide full service to passengers waiting at stops even in emergencies and severe weather, and that drivers have no authority to decide on their own to skip a stop.
