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Trams of Turin

Turin's urban tram network, born with horse-drawn trams, municipalized in 1907 and today being renewed with the new Hitachi trams and Line 12.

The Turin tram is the city's urban tram network, today operated by the Gruppo Torinese Trasporti with eight lines serving Turin and some municipalities in its surrounding belt[1]. Born with horse-drawn carriages and municipalized in 1907, it has lived through the war, mass motorization and the birth of the metro; alongside the standard trams runs a fleet of restored historic vehicles, and the network also includes the rack tramway of Superga.

From horses to electric traction

Public rail transport in Turin began with horse-drawn trams, operated by private companies, including the one known in the city as «la Belga»; together with SATTI and ATM, it is one of the historic companies of Turin's transport[2]. On 28 November 1906 the City Council voted to buy back the network from the Società Elettricità Alta Italia, which was then operating it, and on 1 October 1907 the Azienda Tramvie Municipali (ATM) began operating it directly[3]. On 15 April 1893 the «Linea dei Viali» entered service, a loop that followed the city's main perimeter boulevards and passed in front of Porta Nuova station[4].

A few years earlier, on 26 April 1884, the line between Sassi and the hill of Superga had opened, then a funicular of the Agudio system: the train was pulled by a steel cable, driven by a motor, that ran over pulleys alongside the track[5]. For the fiftieth anniversary of Italian Unification, in 1911, a series of 130 two-axle motor cars built in Turin by the Officine Diatto entered service: one of them, car 116, restored in 1976, is today the oldest tram still able to run in the historic fleet[6].

The 1930s: the «Peter Witt» trams

In the early 1930s the municipal company renewed its fleet with a hundred bogie motor cars built by Fiat Materfer, inspired by the American «Peter Witt» model: these were high-capacity trams, intended to replace motor-car-and-trailer sets[6]. The information sheet for car 2595 describes them as follows:

«It soon became an excellent example, at the European level, of high-capacity tram vehicles.»

GTT, information sheet for historic car 2595

In 1934 the Superga line also changed in nature, becoming a rack tramway with a central rack rail, a system still in use today[5]. Three years later the Enciclopedia Italiana, in its entry devoted to the city, noted that «The urban tramways have recently been reorganized and expanded according to the most modern criteria», and listed a radiating set of extra-urban lines «almost entirely electrified» toward Settimo (11 km), Venaria (9 km), Rivoli (12 km), Stupinigi, Poirino, Gassino-Brusasco (36 km) and, via Orbassano, toward Pinerolo, Giaveno and Cumiana; an 85 km line reached Saluzzo and Cuneo[7].

The war

The Second World War hit the network hard. Twelve motor cars of the 1911 series were requisitioned and sent to Munich[6], and under the bombing car 2592, one of the «Peter Witt» trams, was badly damaged and rebuilt after the war with modifications[6]. The historic car 3501 was created in just this way, right after the war, reusing parts from a car damaged in the 1943 bombings, the year in which, in the November raids, around 250 Allied bombers struck the city; in 2016 it was used for a route around the sites of «Torino in guerra», organized by the Museo diffuso della Resistenza together with the Associazione Torinese Tram Storici[8].

Articulated cars, the «Rete '82» and pantographs

From 1960 the articulated motor cars of the 2800 series appeared, made by joining two trams of the 2100 and 2200 series: green at first, painted orange between 1980 and 2008, for decades they were the very image of the Turin tram[6]. On 2 May 1982 the «Rete '82» came into operation, the first major redesign of the lines, carried out by the new Trasporti Torinesi consortium; in the 1980s the new motor cars of the 7000 and 5000 series also arrived[9]. In March 1990 the replacement of the trolley pole with the pantograph was approved, completed in September 1991; in 2000 the first trams 34 metres long arrived, the last ones built by Fiat Ferroviaria, the railway branch of the FIAT group[9]. On 1 January 2003 ATM and SATTI merged into the Gruppo Torinese Trasporti, and from 2006 the metro joined the tram in urban service[9].

The new trams and the new lines

On 15 May 2020 GTT signed the contract with Hitachi Rail for 70 new trams, divided into two tranches; the first, of 30 cars, cost 63,417,000 euros. The new vehicles are 28 metres long, with a low floor, their styling by Giugiaro Architettura and the city's yellow-and-blue livery; the then mayor Chiara Appendino called public transport «a priority for the present and future of Turin»[10]. The first entered service on 11 September 2023 on line 9: the total outlay of 175 million, financed by the ministry, provided for the replacement of the orange 2800 cars, of which about ten remain as reserves and two as historic heritage[11]. At the presentation, mayor Stefano Lo Russo said: «The presentation of the new trams represents the symbolic start of a very broad project»[11].

In the same years the network has started growing again. At Piazza Baldissera a roughly 400-metre link returns line 10 to its original route along Viale della Spina, in a project worth about 2.9 million euros[12]. The new line 12, 5.5 km long with twelve stops, reuses the disused trackbed of the Turin-Ceres railway, with a cutting and a tunnel, and will reach as far as the Allianz Stadium, on the border with Venaria Reale[13]; in 2023 the government allocated it 221.7 million euros, and the administration presents it as a «light metro», a tram that will link Molinette Hospital to the stadium[14]. In 2026 the replacement of the tracks of line 15 on Corso Vittorio Emanuele II is also under way, as part of a network modernization plan[15].

The historic trams

The historic line 7 retraces, with a variant on Corso Vinzaglio, the 1893 loop of the Viali, with its terminus at Piazza Castello and restored cars from the 1930s to the 1950s, running on Sundays and public holidays[4]. The Sassi-Superga tramway covers 3,100 metres and a 425-metre difference in elevation, with an average gradient of 13.5% and peaks of 21% on the final stretch; the train, a motor car with up to two trailers, carries 180 passengers[5]. The historic cars can be hired for sightseeing tours[6], and car 2847, restored to its 1960s green livery, has become «TRAMeZINO», a tram-bar that runs along Via Po, Piazza Vittorio Veneto and the area of the Gran Madre: the old conductor's booth serves as the counter[16]. Since 2024 the MuviMov project has told the story of the city across more than 120 tram stops with audio, video and more than 500 archive photos from the Associazione Torinese Tram Storici, starting with the Sassi-Superga and line 7[17].

Pages linking here

Related articles: Gruppo Torinese Trasporti

Sources

  1. GTT – Gruppo Torinese Trasporti
  2. GTT – Gruppo Torinese Trasporti
  3. Mole24 — 28 November 2014
  4. GTT – Gruppo Torinese Trasporti
  5. GTT – Gruppo Torinese Trasporti
  6. GTT – Gruppo Torinese Trasporti
  7. Treccani – Enciclopedia Italiana —
  8. TorinoClick (Città di Torino) — 18 October 2016
  9. Tram di Torino (tramditorino.it)
  10. TorinoClick (Città di Torino) — 15 May 2020
  11. TorinoClick (Città di Torino) — 6 September 2023
  12. TorinoClick (Città di Torino) — 30 October 2018
  13. TorinoClick (Città di Torino) — 14 September 2021
  14. TorinoClick (Città di Torino) — 27 September 2023
  15. TorinoClick (Città di Torino) — 11 September 2026
  16. TorinoClick (Città di Torino) — 7 September 2026
  17. TorinoClick (Città di Torino) — 18 June 2025

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