History of Belfast public transport

View the project to restore the tram section pillar.

The first horse tramway opened in Belfast on 28 August 1872 and ran from Castle Place to Botanic Gardens. Initially the Belfast Street Tramways Company which owned the line had only 3 single deck trams, but by February 1973 the line was extended to the Northern Counties Railway Station on York Road via Corporation Street and Great George’s Street. The trams were a great improvement on the horse buses which had preceded them, both in terms of comfort and price, trams being much cheaper.

The new service was moderately successful and the next few years brought extensions to the Courthouse on the Crumlin Road, Richmond on the Antrim Road, Ormeau Bridge on the Ormeau Road, with further development planned for the Lisburn Road and Albertbridge Road to Connswater.

However, the financial returns were less impressive than the London based parent company would have wished and they replaced the manager, W S Totten in November 1881 by Andrew Nance, a young Portsmouth civil engineer. Nance immediately re-organised the route and fare systems and within a short time had significantly increased the Company’s profitability.

As the number of passengers rose the single deck horse cars were replaced by double deck vehicles and the route mileage increased too. The Company’s tenure expired in 1892 and there was considerable public demand that a rental be paid for the “exclusive use of the lines and road way”. The company had an obligation to maintain the road surface between the tracks and for two feet on either side. The rental was set at £5000 for the first seven years of the fourteen years of the renewed contract and £7000 per year for the final seven and this took the Company to 1906.

However, the final quarter of the nineteenth century saw considerable advances in electric traction and from about 1896 pressure began to be exerted on the BST to convert the system to electric traction. The Company was keen to do so but demanded a long lease in which to recoup their expenses while the Belfast Corporation was keen to have electric trams as soon as possible. Eventually the matter was resolved by the Belfast Corporation purchasing the BST in its entirety on 1 January 1905 and converting the system to electric traction. The date of conversion was quite late relative to other municipal tramways; 167 out of 180 municipal systems were electrified before 1906. However once the decision was taken, the whole system was open by 5 December 1905 – almost a British record!

At the time of electrification, the opportunity was taken to extend the system to Greencastle, Cregagh, Stormont, Lisburn Road, Falls Road, Woodvale Road and Duncairn Gardens. The new system proved very popular, faster, more comfortable cheaper than the old horse cars with a maximum fare of 2 old pence. Passenger numbers continued to grow and in 1919 the then General Manager, J S D Moffett increased the fleet by ordering 50 new trams from Brush. They were larger and totally enclosed and lasted almost to the end of tramcar operation. An interesting sidelight is that the next two General Managers, William Chamberlain and Robert McCreary each ordered 50 new trams in 1928 and 1935. Each batch and took the name of the General Manager!

The ten years after the First World War saw relative stability and modest growth in the Undertaking, and on 26 October 1926 the Belfast Corporation “put its toe in the water” and opened an experimental bus service from City Hall to Cavehill Road via Millfield.  However, on 1 June 1928 a blow was delivered to the BCT. The Government at Stormont had transferred the licensing of Public Service vehicles from local authorities to the Ministry of Home Affairs, the result of which allowed private (or as the Corporation preferred “pirate”) bus services in competition with the trams. The competition was fierce, unpredictable and dangerous and incurred a significant drop in Transport Department revenue. The “Bus War”, as it was known, raged for 5 months with bus routes opening and closing apparently at random. On the “pro-bus” side the new vehicles were cheaper and often quicker and more comfortable than the trams with whom they sought to compete. If you lived on the Dundonald or Glengormley routes you were spoilt for choice, but if you resided on one of the less profitable areas e.g. Ravenhill or Ballygomartin you were much less fortunate!

Clearly matters could not continue in this way and the government launched a public enquiry. It reported that agreement had been reached between the private operators and the BCT in which

• The BCT would have a monopoly within the City Boundary and a quarter of a mile beyond, but could be varied by written permission from the Corporation.
• Private operators would not be allowed to pick up and set down within this area
• The BCT would buy 50 buses from the private operators
• The Corporation would take over a number of the private operators’ routes.

The General Manager Samuel Carlisle was blamed for the débâcle and he was demoted to Deputy.

The 1930’s provided a relatively stable period for the Transport Department. His replacement, William Chamberlain was “head-hunted” from Leeds and took up post in 1929. He immediately ordered 50 new upholstered, fully enclosed and heated cars from Brush and they took his name! In addition, he arranged for 50 of the original Standard Reds to be rebuilt to a similar standard, and the fleet to be repainted blue! That meant the fleet included 150 totally enclosed cars which was adequate to operate the “off peak” service.

However, Chamberlain stayed only 2 years and was replaced in August 1931 by Robert McCreary, who held a first-class civil engineering degree and had worked his way up the department to the post of permanent way engineer by 1919. In 1935 he followed the tradition of ordering 50 new trams of a modern streamlined nature and they took his name too! McCreary was an enthusiastic advocate of electric transport vehicles.

In 1930 Belfast Corporation obtained powers to operate trolleybuses within the City Boundary. During the 1930’s many British cites began to operate trolleybuses to replace trams but Belfast’s first trolleybus service began on the Falls Road in 1938, once again being one of the last cities in Britain to operate trolleybuses. (45^th out of 50). Ever cautious the Transport Committee bought 14 trial vehicles from seven manufacturers, six suppliers of electric equipment and five bodybuilders, in order to evaluate the best combination for Belfast. When the decision was taken in 1939 to go for tram abandonment, 112 new trolleybuses were ordered with Associated Equipment Company (AEC) chassis, British Thompson Houston (BTH) electrical equipment and the Belfast firm of Harknes supplying the bodies. However, the declaration of war on 3^rd September 1939 saw the order summarily reduced to 88 vehicles. Major McCreary reported for active duty the day before. He didn’t return till 1945 and was replaced by Samuel Carlisle as Acting General Manager for the duration.

As with all public transport three main effects took place in Belfast.  The first was the huge increase in passenger numbers from 134 million in 1938 to 257 million in 1945; secondly lack of resources reduced maintenance to an absolute minimum and thirdly, although Northern Ireland didn’t have conscription, many men, including drivers and conductors, volunteered. Throughout the war trams gradually gave way to trolleybuses in East Belfast, but the displaced trams were immediately used to strengthen services elsewhere. The majority of the 1905 Standard Reds were still in service forty years later!

Col McCreary (as he had become) retired in 1951 and was replaced by Joseph Mackle who had been Chief Engineer with HMS Catherwood, Road Motor Superintendent with the Great Northern Railway bus division and joined the Belfast Transport Department.  as head of the coach building and motor bus sections. In 1939 he became Acting Deputy General Manager and General Manager in 1951. He was a motorbus man through and through and quickly slowed down the trolleybus replacement of the trams and substituted motor buses instead. He was General Manager in 1958 when the Committee decided to abandon the trolleybuses in favour of motorbuses. He retired in April 1963 and was succeeded by Robin Adams. As with Col McCreary, Robin Adams graduated with a first-class degree in Electrical Engineering. Although a strong supporter of electric traction by the time Adams was promoted to the top job, the decision to abandon trolleybuses had been taken five years previously and in fact was completed in 1968.

Adams final five years were marked by major civil unrest in Belfast and elsewhere in Northern Ireland during which hundreds of buses were destroyed, resulting in withdrawal of service, detours to avoid bombs and frequent robbing the drivers’ takings.

The major political changes imposed after the suspension of the Northern Ireland Parliament saw the Belfast Corporation relieved of its transport responsibilities which were transferred to the Northern Ireland Transport Holding company (effectively Ulsterbus) in April 1973. The new organisation for city buses was, appropriately, called Citybus, which was maintained as a separate entity for many years despite sharing a common management with Ulsterbus. Citybus inherited a fleet of largely double deckers which was gradually replaced with standee single deckers mostly with 32 plastic seats! While this reflected Managing Director Werner Heubeck’s preference, it also took into account the major destruction of buses during this period (over 1400 in total).

In order to keep services running during this difficult period Citybus and Ulsterbus purchased large numbers of second-hand vehicles from over 20 mainland operators.

The signing of the Belfast Agreement in April 1998 saw the rate of destruction reduced dramatically; new comfortable buses were bought; services were extended and strengthened and passenger numbers increased.

Citybus was incorporated into the Translink company in April 1996 and rebranded as “Metro” in February 2005. The fleet colour was altered to pink and white. Since 2022, Translink has been gradually replacing petrol buses with a modern fleet of Electric and Hydrogen buses, with a view to operate a net zero fleet by 2040.

The Glider service was introduced in September 2018 as a “bus rapid transit” system between McKinstry Road in West Belfast and Dundonald Park and Ride in East Belfast via the City Centre. A second route operates between the City Hall and Titanic Quarter on Queen’s Road. There are plans in place to extend the Glider network along the Antrim Road in the North and Ormeau Road in the Southeast and along a Southwestern loop leading past City Hospital and Queen’s University.