Trams are a major form of public transport in Melbourne, the capital city of the state of Victoria, Australia. Since then they have become melbourne bus map pdf distinctive part of Melbourne’s character and feature in tourism and travel advertising. Metropolitan Tramways Board absorbed into the Metropolitan Transit Authority, which was in turn absorbed by the Public Transport Corporation in 1989. Ticketing, public information and patronage promotion are undertaken by Victoria’s public transport body, Public Transport Victoria.

The multi-modal integrated ticketing system, myki, currently operates across the tram network. 20 December 1884, and was closed by 1890. Melbourne’s cable tram system has its origins in the MTOC, started by Francis Boardman Clapp in 1877, with a view to operate a Melbourne tram system. Omnibus Company Act 1883 on 10 October 1883, granting the company the right to operate a cable tram system in Melbourne. 12 municipalities that the MTOC system would serve. The MTT was responsible for the construction of tracks and engine house, while the MTOC built the depots, offices and arranged for the delivery or construction of the rolling stock. The MTT granted a lease to operate the system until 1 July 1916 to the MTOC, with the MTOC paying 4.

This was Melbourne’s only non-MTOC cable tram, built by local land speculators and was operated as an independent line, feeding the Clifton Hill line. The MMTB was formed on 1 November 1919, taking over the MTB cable tram network, with the Northcote tramway and the tramway trusts transferred to the MMTB on 20 February 1920. From 1924 the cable tram lines were progressively converted to electric trams, or abandoned in favour of buses, with the last Melbourne cable tram operating on 26 October 1940. The Victorian Railways line came about when Sir Thomas Bent became Premier. St Kilda railway station, which would allow trams to be moved along the St Kilda railway line for servicing at Jolimont Yard. A fire at the Elwood tram depot on 7 March 1907 destroyed the depot and all the trams. Services resumed on 17 March 1907 using four C-class trams and three D-class trams from Sydney, which were altered to run on VR trucks salvaged from the fire.

VR opened a second, standard gauge, electric tramway from Sandringham railway station to Black Rock on 10 March 1919, it was extended to Beaumaris on 2 September 1926. The service was withdrawn on 5 November 1956 and replaced with buses. Mr Morgan transferred the concession to the NMELT, which had been formed to build the system and provide electricity to the area. The NMELT bought land on Mount Alexander Road for its offices, car barn and power house, with the foundation stone laid by the Mayors of Essendon and Flemington on 24 May 1905, and the first rail laid a month later by Premier Bent. Malvern Tramways Trust Act 1907 was enacted. July 1919 to take control of Melbourne’s cable tram network, six of the seven electric tramway companies, and the last horse tram. By 1940, all cable and horse tram lines had been abandoned or converted to either electric tram or bus operation.

Alex Cameron was its full-time chairman. The tramway network had both cable and electric traction and had been constructed by different bodies without any uniform system. Under Cameron, the MMTB brought these systems under its control, extending the electric lines, and converting the existing cable-system to electric traction. In March 1923 Alex Cameron went overseas to investigate traffic problems. Alex Cameron remained chairman there until 1935. He died a few years later in 1940, the same year the last of the cable tram services in Melbourne ended. The MMTB generated further patronage by developing the enormous Wattle Park in the 1920s and 1930s, it had inherited Wattle Park from the Hawthorn Tramways Trust with the HTTs takeover by the MMTB.

After World War II other Australian cities began to replace their trams with buses. However, in Melbourne, the Bourke Street buses were replaced by trams in 1955, and new lines opened to East Preston and Brunswick East. Melbourne’s tram usage peaked at 260 million trips in 1949, before dropping sharply to 200 million the following year in 1950. However usage defied the trend and bounced back in 1951, but began a gradual decline in usage which would continue until 1970. By the 1970s Melbourne was the only Australian city with a major tram network. By the mid-1970s, as other cities became increasingly choked in traffic and air pollution, Melbourne was convinced that its decision to retain its trams was the correct one, even though patronage had been declining since the 1950s in the face of increasing use of cars and the shift to the outer suburbs, beyond the tram network’s limits. The first tram line extension in over twenty years took place in 1978, along Burwood Highway.