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Tramway in Beirut, 1950ies

In 1959, the tramway was still the most popular means of transport to get around Beirut. For 5-10 piasters (equivalent to today’s LL500 and 1,000, or $ 0.35 and 0.70)), you could get as far as Dora in the East, Manara in the West, and Furn al-Shabbak and Horch Beirut on two lines extending to the South. For their part, Martyrs’ Square, Riad Solh Square and the harbor were connected by a circular line, while the central depot was located in Rue du Fleuve, the eastern extension of Rue Gouraud.
In 1923, the Ottoman Tramway Company, operational since 1909,went bankrupt for the first time, and was then merged with the Gas and Electricity Company, to form the Company for the Tramway and Lighting. It continued to serve an increasingly popular audience until its closure in 1962, when cars claimed the streets and the yellow cabs were considered as relicts of the past, hampering modern traffic with their slow pace.
“The tram would always be crowded, because it was cheap, and its bells were ringing when they stopped and went off again,” recalls Gemaizeh resident Mona Ghoustine, “and when you were driving in your car and unfortunate enough to have one of those in front of you, there was no way to pass, because the roads were too narrow.”
Up to today elderly people, and in particular service drivers, may refer to certain streets, such as the stretch of Rue Omar Daouk-John F. Kennedy-Bliss Street, as “Khatt at-Tram,” or tramway, and bits of the old iron railway still peek through crumbling asphalt.

Collection Mohsen Yammine
© Arab Image Foundation, Beirut
Text: Heiko Wimmen; published in The Daily Star Millenium Special, December 1999