Trolleybus

Categories / City Services/Transportation/Municipal Transportation
TROLLEYBUS, one of the principal means of the mass passenger city transport. The first tests of an electrical wire-operated car in Russia were conducted by engineer S.I. Schulenburg in 1902 in St. Petersburg at Froeze and C° plant. The first trolley line was put into operation in 1936 (it ran through Truda Square, Nevsky Prospect and Krasnaya Square, present-day Alexander Nevsky Square), its length was 5.8 km. The line was operated by two cars, produced at Leningrad Car Repair Plant; later the line was served by YaTB-1 cars, made at Yaroslavsky Plant. In 1937 the second route was launched (linking Finlyandsky Railway Station and Gaza Ave.). By 1940 there were five trolleybus routes in Leningrad, and the trolleybus depot comprised 80 cars. During the Siege from 8 December 1941 to February of 1944 trolleybus service stopped. By the early 1960s the density of trolleybus passenger traffic reached 12-13% of the total city passenger traffic. Since 1947 MTB-82 cars were used on trolley lines, and since 1972 they were replaced with ZIU-5 cars. Double TS car-trains were put into operation in the early 1980s. From 1970 to the early 1990s the length of the trackless lines increased from 160 to 340 km. In the 1990s, the density of passenger traffic reduced from 632,000,000 to 360,000,000 passengers a year, and the depot fleet was cut down from 1,315 to 849 cars. By 2002 the passenger traffic increased, and over 40 trolleybus lines were launched in St. Petersburg by 2003. The maintenance facilities for the car fleet are provided by trolleybus depots.

References: Годес Я. Г. Этот привычный троллейбус // ЛП. 1983. № 8. С. 36-38; Трамвай и троллейбус Санкт-Петербурга / Авт.-сост. М. Н. Величенко. СПб., 1997.

A. P. Zhukovsky. Schulenburg S.I.
Alexander Nevsky Square/Saint Petersburg, city
Nevsky prospect/Saint Petersburg, city
Truda Square/Saint Petersburg, city
Годес Я. Г. Этот привычный троллейбус // Ленингр. панорама, 1983 Finlyandsky Railway Station
Siege of 1941-44
Trolleybus depots
1936
1944