It’s been 74 years since electric-trolley buses hit the streets of Vancouver and today, TransLink has one of the largest trolleybus fleets in North America and is the only transit system in Canada that operates them.

Trolley buses first burst into the scene as part of the ambitious “rails-to-rubber” conversion to decommission the streetcar network.

The streetcar was the backbone of the region’s transit system for more than 60 years. The end of the Great Depression and World War II challenged us to rethink public transit: stay with streetcars and their tracks, or switch to rubber-tired buses.

It was an easy decision at the time.

Gasoline and diesel buses were considered not “ready for prime time” and the overhead network was already in place to power the trolley buses. Streetcars had a single overhead wire for the power and used the steel rails for ground, so all that was needed was a parallel overhead wire to be installed for ground.

The first trolley bus, a Canadian Car Brill T-44, hit the road on August 16, 1948, forever changing the way we move around in the city. The first route was the Fraser-Cambie, going along Fraser from Marine Drive to Kingsway, then down Main to Pender in Chinatown, left on Pender to Seymour, then to Robson and Cambie and over the Cambie Bridge to 29th Avenue.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

The trolley bus continued to replace streetcar routes and the last streetcar route departed Vancouver’s streets in 1955.

Diesel buses soon joined the fleet, and later came compressed natural gas and diesel-electric hybrid.

In 2019, the first battery-electric bus, powered by an onboard battery that that’s recharged using in-route chargers, arrived and entered service on the 100 Marpole Loop/22nd Street Station route. There are four battery-electric buses currently in service with 15 additional buses on the way.

Our trolley-bus fleet today consists of 262 forty- and sixty-foot buses built by New Flyer, operating on 13 routes. TransLink is the only transit system in Canada that operates trolley buses and our fleet is one of the largest in North America. Other cities with trolley buses include Philadelphia and Seattle.

The number of electric buses on Metro Vancouver roads is slated to increase as part of our Climate Action Strategy, which was adopted in 2022. It maps an aggressive path to zero greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) and how we build a more climate-resilient transit system by 2050.

By taking transit walking, or biking instead of driving, you’re taking one of the biggest steps to shrink your carbon footprint.