Beirut
Beirut ( ; ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Lebanon. , Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, just under half of Lebanon's population, which makes it the List of largest cities in the Levant region by populatio ...
maintained a public
tram
A tram (also known as a streetcar or trolley in Canada and the United States) is an urban rail transit in which Rolling stock, vehicles, whether individual railcars or multiple-unit trains, run on tramway tracks on urban public streets; some ...
way from the early to mid 20th century. The first tramline was developed under the Ottoman rule and continued operation under the
French Mandate
The Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon (; , also referred to as the Levant States; 1923−1946) was a League of Nations mandate founded in the aftermath of the First World War and the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire, concerning the territori ...
up to the 1960s, as modern automobiles became widely adopted. With the problem of congestion and severe traffic jams caused by the explosion of cars in the Beirut Metropolitan area, trams have been proposed as a possible solution.
History
The tramway system in Beirut opened in April 1908 and lasted until September 1965. The golden age of the Beirut Tram saw it cover 12 Kilometers around Beirut's center in 1931. As automobiles became more widely adopted, tram tracks were removed to give way for more cars until the tram was fully decommissioned in September 1968.
Gallery
Beirut, Rue Basta.jpg, Terminus on Basta Street, 1925
Beirut Tramway in Bliss Street.jpg, Line 2 tram in Bliss Street, 1940s
Straatbeeld in Beiroet, Bestanddeelnr 255-6195.jpg, Line 3 tram, 1950s
Beirut Tramways 1961.svg, Network plan, 1961
See also
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Rail transport in Lebanon
Rail transport in Lebanon began in the 1890s as French Third Republic, French projects under the Ottoman Empire but largely ceased in the 1970s owing to the country's Lebanese Civil War, civil war. The last remaining routes ended for economic re ...
References
Bibliography
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Rail transport in Lebanon
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