Tram, trolleybus and bus services in Eastern-European socialist urban planning: Case studies of Magdeburg, Ostrava and Oryol (1950s and 1960s)

Abstract

This study examines urban collective transport policy in the city planning of three European countries under the Socialist Bloc in the 1950s and 1960s. The main aim is to account for the success of the private car in approaches to urban infrastructure and to understand how this affected tramway system planning. This then leads to a new perspective in understanding the conflict between the adoption of transport vehicles: The diversity of argument in tramway planning has been analysed using official publications, professional literature, and the urban and transport plans of the three case study cities. It results that planning solutions prioritised more national and local conditions, their logic and the singularity of their characteristics over the specific principles related to the ideology of the communist regimes.

Diversification of policies for the development of electric public transport in the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia

“…With this in view, solutions involving buses powered with natural gas, electricity, hydrogen and hybrid ones are proposed, as well as the development of tramway and trolleybus transport (Jurkovič et al, 2020;Sendek-Matysiak et al, 2020;Skrúcaný et al, 2019;Ślusarczyk, 2020). The use of low-emission transport is important in improving living conditions in cities (Khairullina, Santos y Ganges, 2020;Michniak, 2020;Rišová, Pouš, 2018;Trembošova et al, 2020). The amount of budgetary funds allocated for these purposes is of key importance for the development of electrified transport in the post-communist countries of the European Union.…”