Bordeaux Tramway, June 2018

Bordeaux had a traditional street tramway which closed in 1958. The modern tramway owes its existence to a civic vision to rejuvenate the city by the Communauté urbaine de Bordeaux led by Alain Juppé after he was elected mayor in 1995. This involved stone cleaning and the wholesale renovation of the city centre, car free zones, cycle paths and a street level light-metro. The brief called for the removal of all visual clutter on the wide boulevards, and this precluded the use of overhead wires for the tram-metro. To achieve this Innorail-Alstom devised the APS (Alimentation par le Sol) third rail system for the city centre; the rail is divided into short sections which only become live when they are directly under a tram.

The new tramway opened in stages from 2003. There are currently 3 routes with a fourth under construction. The standard-gauge trams are 100% low floor Alstom Citadis with air conditioning. 115 trams are in service; many started as 5-unit cars but have been extended to 7-units as the ridership of the tramway has increased.