The Gothenburg Tramway () is the public transport system of trams in the city of Gothenburg, Sweden. Forming the backbone of transport in Gothenburg, the tramway serves larger parts of the city and surrounding urban areas. The traffic is operated by Göteborgs Spårvägar AB and the infrastructure is managed by the Gothenburg Traffic Administration Office, while Västtrafik AB serves as the transit authority. The current contract to drive the tramway traffic is valid until the year 2034.Göteborgs Stads Kollektivtrafik AB. Accessed on 10 October 2024.
Currently, the tramway system consists of 132 stops on 12 regular lines in service. Most lines pass through Brunnsparken, which is effectively the central hub of public transport, with departures approximately every 10 minutes during rush hour. The network consists of of single track, making it the largest tramway network in the Nordic countries by length.Årsrapport Trafiksäkerhet 2022, City of Gothenburg 22 January 2025. In 2024, the ridership was an estimated 125 million people.
Trams have operated in Gothenburg since 1879. The Liseberg Line is an independent heritage line co-operated by the Ringlinien Tramway Society. The trams of Gothenburg are an iconic feature of the cityscape.
History Prehistory
In spring 1836 there were plans to develop traffic between the centre of Gothenburg and Klippan. The newspaper Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning campaigned for this, and an advantage for omnibuses was that people could have "tickets, small parcels and requests" delivered to Masthugget, Varvet, Majorna, Klippan and all the way towards the mouth of the river. The required starting capital was five thousand riksdaler, which could be achieved through sales of shares of fifty riksdaler each. In late April 1836 there were annoncements for "Gleerupska bokhandlen" on "Stora Hamngatan", and in July 1836 it was announced that a company had been founded. The company was led by Carl Fredrik Kjellberg, Johan Norström, J.R. Melin, Heinrich Röhss and Elias Ahrenberg.
The wagons were planned to be drawn by two horses and carry eight passengers. In December 1836 "Resetourene för Omnibus" were announced in newspapers. At the time of inauguration, the traffic only ran on weekdays. The first wagons started at nine in the morning from Stigbergsliden to the city centre, where the stop was located in front of the Frimurarlogen house on Södra Hamngatan. The wagons turned back towards Stigbergsliden at half past nine in the morning, where they continued to Klippan and turned back at eleven in the morning. The ticket cost was eight skillings, which was paid on entry to the wagon to get a ticket, which was then put in a box by the door at the stop of the journey.
The omnibus traffic lasted regularly for the whole of the year 1837, and in the following year, the timetable was extended with Sunday journeys to Lärje with a stop at Gamlestaden. The omnibus traffic had a practical monopoly on Gothenburg's public transport until the inauguration of the horse-drawn tramway.Krantz, Claes: I krinolinens tidevarv - en kulturkrönika i Göteborgs-perspektiv, N J Gumpetrs Bokhandel, Göteborg 1937, p. 151.
Horse-drawn tramway Stockholm got a horse-drawn tramway in 1877, and outside Sweden, New York City got one already in 1852 and Copenhagen in 1862.Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning 17 October 1942. In 1873 there was a first proposal to construct a tramway in Gothenburg. Lieutenant Carl Wettergren thought it would be possible to have tram traffic in Gothenburg in 60 years. The proposal was rejected in 1874 both by the city council and by the King in Council. The city council's reason for the rejection was "that a private person should have rights to the construction and the city should be given the right to freely oversee the streets and open squares the tracks would be built on". The next proposal came in September 1875 when Aron Philippson made a proposal to the city council to build a tramway in Gothenburg. The city council appointed a committee of five people, including Philipsson. The other committee members were Josef Richert, Carl Gustaf Prytz, James Keiller and August Kobb. In June 1877 the committee made a proposal to the city council to build a horse-drawn tramway in Gothenburg.
After studies in Copenhagen as well as Christiania, there was a proposal to build three tram lines: Redberget - Klippan, Brunnsparken - Getebersgäng and Haga - Slottsskogsparken. The city council approved this proposal, with the exception that the line to Klippan should only go to Stigbergsliden.Göteborgs Spårvägar 1879-1979: en historik, Göteborgs Spårvägar 1979, p. 1. The committee got an offer for the construction of the tramway and the operation of the tram traffic. A short time afterwards the committee made a new proposal for the concession of the Gothenburg tramway from the captain Carl Christian Juell in Copenhagen. Juell had decided on a tram line from the St. John's Church to Klippan, because he thought the hills in Majorna would make traffic lethally dangerous to both people and horses. His technical explanation was as follows: "Everything depends on the brakes on the outgoing trip, and despite all care taken in the construction of the trams it would be impossible to account for the case where the brakes broke." According to Juell, it would be both cheaper and easier to build a steamship line to Majorna.Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning 17 October 1942: "Ingen spårvagnsbroms håller i Majornas backar!"
On 18 October 1877, the Gothenburg city council approved captain Juell's proposal with 29 votes for and 18 votes against and gave him a concession of 40 years, during which time the concession owner had the right to tramway traffic in Gothenburg. The conditions included: that the city council would at one point decide on the tram routes and costs that the passenger fare should be set at 10 öre for each traffic district within four thousand feet that the lines should travel at least every twenty minutes that the traffic system should be ready to use two years after the concession was approved, at the latest.Kommunalarbetareförebundet, avdelning: 53 Historik över Göteborgs spårvägars trafikpertsonals fackliga organisationers arbete 1885-1945, Anders Johansson. Publications of the Swedish municipal worker union, chapter 53, Gothenburg 1945, p. 9.
Captain Juell proved to have problems with financing his project, and in 1879 the city council approved to transfer the concession to William Barfoot from Leicester, to him personally instead of to a company. The concession for the tramway was later taken over by Henry Alexander Milne and after his death in 1881 to his son-in-law Richard Gard'ner.Eulogy to Henry Alexander Milne, Göteborgs-Posten 8 July 1881, p. 1.
The first tram line in Gothenburg was started in 1879 by the Gothenburg Tramways Company Ltd, based in England. This was a horse-drawn tramway, which stretched from Brunnsparken to Stigbergsliden. The city bought the tramway by the end of 1899, and introduced electrically powered trams only three years later when Sigfrid Edström led the electrification of the trams. During the next 40 years, the tram system was heavily expanded, reaching outside the city borders by 1907, and Hisingen in 1940.
The first tram line in Gothenburg was a line between Brunnsparken and the start of Stigbergsgliden - a distance of 2.7 kilometres - which was opened on 24 September 1879. The trip with four horsecars started at 16:00 in the afternoon and took about 15 minutes and "passengers were thereafter invited for refreshments at the local Henriksberg restaurant". The tram line opened for public traffic on the following day, with a tram starting at Stigbergsgliden at 07:30 in the morning and from Brunnsparken at 08:00 in the morning. Trams left thereafter every 15 minutes, until 21:00 and 21:30 respectively. The tram fare was 20 öre per person, from one terminus to the other. However, there was a tax of ten öre in the middle, at the swimming pool in Haga.Göteborgs-Posten, 25 September 1879. There were no stops for passengers to embark or disembark, instead the trams stopped anywhere they could along the way by the request of the passengers, except at uphill climbs.Göteborgs Spårvägar 1879, 24 September 1929, p. 12. The trams navigated their way among the pedestrians so that the coachmen used a ringing bell. Some coachmen had personal ring signals so that passengers could hear from the signal who was the coachman at the time.Wedel, Kristian: Historiska nyheter: Göteborg i nyheternas centrum, Bokförlaget Max Ström, Stockholm 2010. , p. 8.
The first ceremonial shovel load for the tramway was dug at the intersection of the streets Södra Allégatan and Sprängkullsgatan on 16 July 1879.Lignell, Harald (ed.): Göteborgsbilder 1850-1950, Bokförlaget Nordisk Litteratur, Ludw. Simongson Boktryckeri, Gothenburg 1952. The construction was directed by the engineers Richard Gard'ner and H.R. McKeone.The trams were brown and drove on single tracks on a metre-gauge railway, and by 1882 four lines had been constructed. In 1896 there were 36 trams, 4 buses and 126 horses in service in the Gothenburg public transport with a total passenger count of 2.7 million in trams and 38,831 in buses.C G Prytz (1898), p. 213. The lines were as follows: 24 September 1879: Brunnsparken - Stigbergsgliden (2.82 km or 9,500 feet)Tidning för Wenersborgs Stad och Län, 29 September 1879, p. 3. 9 December 1881: Brunnsparken - Redbergslid (2.3 km) 1881: Brunnsparken - Getebergsgäng (2.34 km) 3 October 1882: Brunnsparken - Slottsskogen (2.98 km)Forsberg & Polheimer (2002), p. 5.
(In 1898 the terminus stop at Brunnsparken was moved to Drottningstorget so the linbe could go over the recently completed Victoriabron bridge. This shortened the line to 2.62 km.)Göteborgs Spårvägar (1929), p. 12.
The first company for the tram staff was founded on 27 November 1885, on the initiative from the tram conductor at the Gothenburg tramway, J. Melanoz. An influential staff member in Gothenburg was J.A. Larsson (with the staff member number 26). The daily pay (for 14 hours) for a tram conductor was 1 krona and 90 öre and that for a tram driver was 2 krona and 10 öre.Sv. kommunalarbetareförbundets avd. 53: Minneskrift 1915-1925, C.R. Carlsson, Gothenburg 1925, p. 5.