Le Havre's tramway was built when the municipality sought to equip itself with a modern form of urban transport capable of multiplying the travel possibilities of its inhabitants, as many other French cities at the end of the 19th century did. The tramway, inaugurated in Le Havre in 1874, first horse-drawn, then electric, served until World War I, transporting over 20 million people by 1913.

Competing with road transport from the 1920s onwards, it was gradually abandoned and disappeared shortly after World War II (in 1951), which was particularly destructive for the city. Following a favorable decision by the urban community in early 2007 to build an exclusive right-of-way public transport network, the tramway has been running again in Le Havre since 12 December 2012.

The beginnings of the tramway (1874–1894)

Elected representatives finally decide Founded in 1517 by Francis I of France, the city of Le Havre experienced strong economic and demographic growth from the Second French Empire onwards, when its walls were demolished. An outport of Paris at the mouth of the Seine, Le Havre, reached by rail transport in March 1847, became increasingly industrialized as its quays lengthened. Metallurgy, shipbuilding, weaving machine and horology movement factories created jobs and led to a rapid increase in the population of a conurbation numbering over 120,000 souls in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871.

In the early 1870s, Le Havre's municipal authorities sought to modernize the city's transport system, which was unable to cope with the growing number of journeys within the city and to and from the rapidly expanding neighboring towns. In 1872, a Belgian businessman, M. de la Hault, acting on behalf of the Banque Française et Italienne, presented the municipality with a project for horse-drawn tramways, known as "American railroads",This type of transport appeared in the United States in 1832. to replace the skeletal horse-drawn omnibus services in place since the July Monarchy.

In 1854, an engineer from Le Havre had already submitted similar proposals to the local authorities, who had rejected them. This time, the Porte Océane (commonly used name to designate Le Havre) councilors did not miss a beat and, after approval of the scope statements, awarded the establishment and operation of the new network to Belgian interests following the retrocession treaty of 3 November, 1873.

The first horse-drawn tramway Installation work proceeded apace, and on 1 February, 1874, the first line between Rouen's Jetée and Octroi via Rue de Paris and Place de l'Hôtel de Ville went into service.At the town hall, this line split into two branches: one took the chaussée d'Ingouville (avenue du Président-Coty) and the Normandie street (Maréchal-Joffre streer and Aristide-Briand street), the other followed boulevard de Strasbourg and cours de la République to serve the station, joining the first route at Rond-Point. It was an immediate success, with over 80,000 passengers using the line between 1 February and 14.

This dynamism in urban transport led to an extension of the new mode of communication, and a second route between the town hall and the neighborhood Carreau de Sainte-Adresse via the Quatre Chemins and the Broche à Rôtir was gradually handed over to cars between 1 October, 1875, and 8 May, 1879. The line serving the southern part of the town between Place Louis-XVI (Gambetta) and the former Slaughterhouses began operating on 1 May, 1880.The Place de l'Amiral-Courbet became the ending point, replacing the former Slaughterhouses in 1888. Meanwhile, on 2 February, 1876, the Banque Française et Italienne had transferred management of the network to the Compagnie Générale Française de Tramways (C.G.F.T).

Service on these 11,300-kilometer-long lines was provided by three types of carriage (open, double-decker and open), which were stored at the Graville depot, along with the 200 horses needed to pull them.

The Belle Epoque of the tramway (1894–1914)

The electrification

With the company devoting little investment to improving its network, in the late 1880s the municipality decided to put pressure on the C.G.F.T to improve the quality of its urban services by considering the concession of new lines to competing companies. Threatened, the C.G.F.T came up with decisive arguments to protect its monopoly: lower fares, and a decision to study the electrification of the network on 28 October, 1892.

The work begun in 1893 was completed on the various sections between February and August 1894, before the official inauguration on 25 September. There was general enthusiasm in the city of Normandy, as the people of Le Havre found the new cars clean, elegant, fast and well-lit at night; from the start of operations, tens of thousands of passengers used them every day (they carried 9,300,000 passengers in 1895).

This equipment, which maintained an outstanding technical unity on the major French networks throughout the tramway's existence, was of simple, robust design, well adapted to local conditions. Built by the Compagnie Française de Matériel de Chemin de Fer in Ivry, the initial 40 tramcars were equipped with a 25 HP motor for 24 of them and two identical motors for the 16 others destined for the Sainte-Adresse line, which had steeper gradients. avec description détaillée du matériel. Le Havre was the first major city in France to have a fully electrified network.

The British were impressed, and drew inspiration from it to establish the tramways of Belfast and of the Isle of Man, a fitting return in a region where English influence on railways had always been very strong.

Network's extension

Following the successful introduction of electricity, the C.G.F.T embarked on a vast program to extend its lines, opening two new sections in 1896:

one facing the sea between the Octroi de la Hève and the Jetée (Hôtel Frascati) on 30 May, the other between Hôtel de Ville and AbattoirsAt the time, the term "Abattoirs" was used to designate the new slaughterhouses located beyond Pont V in the Eure district. The passage of streetcars over Pont V was not authorized until 27 March 1899, although the infrastructure had already been in place for 3 years. on 17 June;

(eight new railcars were delivered to provide service).

These creations set the stage for the construction of a second and third network, which were gradually built up in the years leading up to World War I.

Alongside extensions of existing routes, such as the one from Place de l'Amiral Courbet to the Grands Bassins in 1897, or those from Sainte-Adresse to Ignauval and from Les Abattoirs to Petite Eure in 1899, new lines were regularly opened to the public. They linked the different parts of the city to each other, to the port and industrial zones, and to leisure and walking areas.

The following lines were thus inaugurated: pour l'ensemble des lignes.

from Le Havre Station to Sanvic and Bléville via Boulevard of Strasbourg and Boulevard Maritime, 20 June, 1897. from Gare to Jetée via Place Gambetta, 5 January, 1901. Place Thiers to Notre-Dame bridge, 18 March, 1901. from place Gambetta to Sainte – Marie graveyard, 11 March, 1902. boulevard de Graville to Sanvic via Montivilliers street, 2 March, 1905. from Paris street to quai of Southampton, 2 July, 1906. from Octroi de la Hève to Les Phares, 30 June, 1907, extended to Ignouval, 4 June, 1908, to which should be added service to Palais des Régates and Nice havrais, provided from 27 July, 1912. from Rond-Point to Saint-François' Church, 15 January, 1912.

The tramway's heyday

The dynamism of the C.G.F.T, which in 1913 carried 21,600,000 passengers (an increase of 132% on 1895) in its 102 power cars and 43 trailers, was not only demonstrated by the opening of the new sections mentioned above. During these years of expansion, the company absorbed two of the three independent companies that also provided passenger transport in the Le Havre area. The network reached its maximum length of 57.414 kilometers.

The Montivilliers tramway, which faced stiff competition from the C.G.F.T as far as Graville, was finally bought out by the latter in December 1908. Major technical modifications were necessary, and the small company's equipment stopped running between its terminus at La Jetée and Le Havre station in April 1910.See paragraph on the Montivilliers tramway at the end of the article. The metric track was gradually replaced by the standard gauge track used by the Le Havre tramways in the course of the same year, 1910, when 14 new cars built by Ateliers du Nord de la France were delivered.

The Côte Sainte-Marie tramway, closed since 1902 following the bankruptcy of its operator,See paragraph on the Côte Sainte-Marie tramway at the end of the article. was reopened in October 1911 under its new owner, and extended to Bois des Hallates on 1 June, 1912.

Initial difficulties at closure (1914–1951)

World War I and its consequences

As in all other major French cities, the first months of the Great War saw the disorganization of the tramway service. The hiring of Belgian staff, British motormen and, from 1916 onwards, women to drive the motrices on the "easy" lines, enabled operations to return to almost normal. A few cars were used to transport the wounded from the front between the station and the city's military hospitals. A provisional 3,000 m line was built in early 1917 to facilitate workers' access to the new factories located between the railway and the Tancarville canal, and merely completed the connection to the Schneider factories completed in 1915.

For the C.G.F.T, the end of the war marked the beginning of major economic and social difficulties. Inadequate maintenance of track and equipment between 1914 and 1918 caused a need for major investment in refurbishment, while the general rise in prices exacerbated staff grievances. The deficit, which had already reached 200,000 francs in 1917, widened still further; a strike by workshop staff suspended traffic between 21 April and 23 May, 1919. Faced with this delicate situation, the municipality and the C.G.F.T responded by signing a new agreement on 18 December and 20, 1921. This endorsed the fare increases introduced in 1920, reduced the daily number of round trips on each line, and freed up resources for the overhaul and renovation (vestibulage) of the rolling stock.

The 1920s also saw the partial or total closure of certain lines whose mileage performance did not justify refurbishment and modernization: Pont V – Abattoirs, Boulevard de Graville – Gambetta, Rond-Point – Notre-Dame, Gare Jetée, Jetée – Octroi de la Hève

The difficulties of the interwar period and the introduction of the first buses and trolleybuses

Despite the deficit, which successive fare increases failed to offset, a final project to extend the network towards the Mare au Clerc district, north of the Sainte-Marie cemetery, was proposed to the local authorities in 1928. This proposal was not followed up, as the time for tramways had passed; in fact, that same year, the municipality decided to introduce the first buses. These, along with the trolleybuses introduced in 1938, remained confined to secondary lines until World War II, and did not constitute serious competition for the rail network, which continued to modernize its engines.

The old cars were adapted to single-agent operation, while 6 new ones were delivered to the Le Havre network in 1930 by the Société Auxiliaire Française de Tramways (SAFT). Powerful (2 x 75 hp engines) and equipped with a modern, efficient braking system, they were assigned to the steep Gare – Sanvic – Bléville line. avec description détaillée du matériel.

World War II and closure