A history and a future outlook on a development of city electric public transportations were reviewed in the Presidential Library

A challenging way of development of city public transportations from an omnibus to the current streetcar was evaluated today, November 14, 2017, in the Presidential Library. The participants in public video lecturing entitled “Streetcar — public transportation of the future” found out about who was an inventor of the first tram, what was the first electric transport route in the Northern capital and how severe the traffic situation in the city streets was over a century ago. In addition, an opening of the multimedia exhibition of the kids’ drawings for “Streetcars and trolleys in the city on the Neva” 2016—2017 contest within the framework of the event was the.

110 years have passed since the first electric car was launched in St. Petersburg. During this time, this type of public transportation has gained wide popularity among the guests and the residents of the city. According to a professor of the Department of Transportation Systems of St. Petersburg State University of Architecture and Construction, PhD in Economics Andrei Gorev, the tram has always been on the edge of the technical progress among the types of city public transportations.

The adviser of the director of “Gorelectrotrans” St. Petersburg State Unitary Enterprise and the head of the service of technical policy, PhD in technical sciences, Sergey Chinayev has shared on the details of managing a technical equipment of the rolling stock of the tram. The director of the City Electric Transport Museum Cyril Nuekvist told how prestigious it was to operate the streetcar at the beginning of the XX century.

A history of the Presidential Library and the St. Petersburg tram is narrowly connected. It was over the Senate Square where the first tramline in the city was going more than 100 years ago. Today, owing to the unique digital library fund could be learned how a new type of public transportation has gradually introduced into commuting across the city. For example, collected in the publication "Tram estimates and drawings. 1912 "electronic copies of maps of tramways of different years show how the tram network grew and expanded.

The exceptional historical materials from the Presidential Library stock illustrate in detail the evolution of the streetcar movement in St. Petersburg. This new type of public transportation has shown in the city in 1830. So, in an electronic copy of “A case of entrusting a senior state councilor Tricot to get a special kind of coach or omnibus type of vehicle for the passenger transportations across St. Petersburg as well as to Tsarskoye Selo and Pavlovsk” is given a detailed description of such kind of vehicle innovation: “All the cabs should have their seats equally arranged, the number of these places does not exceed 16. <…> With each car, apart from a coachman, there has to be a conductor. <…> This conductor lets in and out all the passengers and accepts a fare. <…> Only the passangers of nice appearance are allowed in the omnibuses.”

In the 1860s, the omnibuses were replaced with a horse-railway city road or a tramcar by horse-drawn carriage, called “Konka” in the common public slang. An electric tram was the next in turn.

More details about the building of city streetcar communication can be found in the electronic copy of the 1904-year edition of “The project of a reorganization of the St. Petersburg railways for electrical haulage”: “The carlines should be directed in such a way that they connect the outermost parts of the city with separate uninterrupted lines going through the central arteries of the city traffic, so that every passenger could commute from one neighborhood to the other without taking another carline and with the least spending of time and money.”

These and many other exclusive documents are all composed in the digital array of the Presidential Library named Petersburg’s Tram. It has collations of materials related to an arrangement and technical support of the tramway traffic in St. Petersburg (until 1917) including a history of city streetcar transportations during the Great Patriotic War. Of particular interest is the extensive photo archive of the Museum of the City Electric Transportations. So, the interior of the museum tram cabin of LM—33 model could be observed, while the most meticulous sightseers will be able to evaluate the advertising advertisements posted in interior.