Chisinau Tram

The history of the creation of the Chisinau tram system began in April 1888 , when the Chisinau City Council decided to build a horse-drawn railway in the city. An agreement on the construction and further operation of the Konka was concluded with entrepreneurs named Rogazinsky, Romanovich and Svitalsky. The movement was opened on October 29, 1888 . Over the year, on the Alexandrovskaya street (the current Avenue of Stefan cel Mare ) and other central streets of the city, a horse-drawn railway line was built with a length of about 6 miles . Rails for construction were cast at the Bryansk Railway Plant, wagons were purchased in Warsaw (7 open wagons) and Odessa (7 closed wagons). On the rails, the wagons dragged a team of two horses.

In 1895, the Konka line was bought by the merchant Chisinau, Bakal, who founded the joint-stock company, the attorney-at-law of Rosing, the engineers Lozinsky and Serbov. The very next year, 1896 , the equestrian railway line along with the rolling stock was again sold, this time to entrepreneurs from Belgium , who organized the so-called “Anonymous Society of Chisinau Equestrian Railways”.

In 1897, the City Council adopted the project for the construction of the second stage of the ridge, the purpose of which was to connect the central part of the city with the railway station . By 1910, the length of the lines of the Chisinau equestrian railway was 12.5 kilometers ^[1] .

The year 1910 was the time when the skates were converted to electric traction. The City Council adopted an appropriate resolution. In 1911, an agreement was reached on this with the Belgian Anonymous Society, and a concession agreement was signed. Since 1913, electric trams began to run in Chisinau, and a new tram line was laid from Pushkinskaya Street to the Skulyanskaya slingshot. On Aleksandrovskaya street, the tram traffic became double-track. In total, there were 4 tram routes operating in Chisinau at that time. The length of all routes was about 14 kilometers. On the line went up to 30 cars at a time.

From 1918 to 1940 , when Bessarabia became part of Romania , the Chisinau tram continued to be owned by the Belgian Anonymous Society. Since 1940, after Bessarabia became part of the USSR , the city's tram economy became the property of the state.

In 1944 , retreating from Chisinau, the Nazi army blew up tram hangars and repair shops, destroyed most of the rolling stock of the Chisinau tram, while taking part of the trams with them. At that time, narrow-gauge trams were not produced in the USSR. Therefore, the restoration of the tram economy was slow. This is evidenced by the fact that by 1952 only 17 motor cars, as well as a hangar and rolling stock repair workshops, were repaired and returned to work by workers in the Chisinau tram economy. In 1956 alone , the city's tram park was replenished with 7 motor and 5 trailed cars, which arrived in Chisinau from Germany ^[2] .

The tram track in Chisinau was narrow gauge - 1000 millimeters - and until the very end of the existence of the city tram was not replaced anywhere by a wide one ^[3] .

The regular tram movement in Chisinau after the Great Patriotic War was reopened in 1946 . The length of all tram routes at that time was more than 17 kilometers. The number of passengers carried was more than 9 million people per year ^[1] . With the appearance of the Chisinau trolleybus on the streets of the city in October 1949, the tram economy of the city stopped developing, the tram lines were removed and replaced everywhere with bus and trolleybus routes. On May 11, 1961, the last tram car passed through the city streets, after which all tram rails were removed ^{[4] [5]} .

The main routes of the Chisinau tram were 4. After the war, some routes were divided into shorter ones, in order to optimize passenger traffic, there were, in particular, routes No. 5 and No. 7 (information about which routes corresponded to them was not preserved).

The only tram depot in the city was located at 138 Metropolitan Dosoftey Street, next to the current Bucuria confectionery.

The tram depot was designed in 1912 in St. Petersburg. In 1913, the depot was built on the then outskirts of the city, near the terminus of the tram line. The depot construction complex included seven buildings, which housed premises for the repair of rolling stock, as well as workshops, a canteen for depot workers, warehouses, a stable and administration. The buildings are built of red brick, the decor elements were painted white. Currently, the depot building is preserved, it is an officially recognized architectural monument of Chisinau. In the Soviet era, several extensions of no architectural value were made to it, which are now painted gray ^[11] .

In the second half of the 1980s, the city authorities again faced the issue of organizing tram traffic in the city. The construction of a light rail was included in the 1986 Chisinau City Master Plan. The tram depot was to be built in the Budeshty-2 area (the area that was not built) and the Computer Plant (which remained unfinished). The light rail route was supposed to go from Kutuzovsky Prospekt (currently Prospect Mircea Chel Betryn , Chekany sector), through Izmailskaya Street and further along Prospekt Mira (currently called Dacia Avenue , Botanika sector). The project was never implemented, and at present it has become irrelevant, mainly due to a sharp reduction in industrial enterprises in the Chekany sector ^[16] .

Once again, the question of the Chisinau tram was raised in mid-March 2011 . At that time in Minsk, the mayor of Chisinau, Dorin Chirtoaca, together with the chairman of the Minsk city executive committee, Nikolai Ladutko, signed a letter of intent, which, in particular, indicated that the mayoralty of Chisinau would take into account the project of the open joint-stock company Belkommunmash ”, Which recognizes the possibility of building and developing a city light rail system.

Nevertheless, the mayor of Chisinau made a statement in which he said that in Chisinau municipality it would be possible to build either a light rail or an “ easy metro ” without specifying what exactly would be built in the end.

According to this plan, unlike the Soviet project, the construction of two light rail lines is planned. The first will start at Chisinau International Airport , pass through the city center and end in the suburban village of Vatra (near the Gidigich reservoir). The second line will stretch from the southern bus station of Chisinau to the northern part of the capital of Moldova. The plan provides for the extension of the route to the Vadul-lui-Voda recreation area (on the banks of the Dniester River ) ^[17] .

• Chisinau Tram on the site "Old Chisinau"