Historical highlights

More than a century of memories and experience

The development of public transport in Ljubljana has always been inseparably connected with the lives of the citizens and with the development of the city itself. Its today’s image would not be the same without the “green urban buses”. The history of public transport in Ljubljana started on 6 September 1901 when the first tram appeared on the city roads. Tram – a real adventure
 
In Europe, the public tram transport started developing near the end of the 19th century and Ljubljana also started thinking about it, as the number of inhabitants in the city grew constantly. When there were around forty thousand people living in Ljubljana, the City Council decided to introduce the “mechanical” means of transportation and in 1900 the General Small Railway Company was founded. Without any special ceremonies, the tram started operating in Ljubljana on 6 September 1901. At the beginning, taking a ride on it was a true adventure and the thrilled inhabitants of Ljubljana rode it for fun rather than need. They sold as many as 6,400 riding tickets on the very first day.
 
In 1901, the General Small Railway Company was indeed small, as it only had 13 drive carriages, one trailer and a carriage for spreading salt on the roads during the winter, and employed 64 people. In each of the drive carriages there was room for 30 people (16 seating and 14 standing) and the trams travelled with the speed of up to thirty kilometres per hour. By the end of 1901, the Ljubljana trams travelled around 136,000 kilometres and transported about 330,000 passengers.
 
The General Small Railway Company which managed the trams in Ljubljana, was an Austrian private public limited company managed by a foreign investor, the company Siemens & Halske. After the expiry of the twenty-fifth year of operation of the road rail, the city finally got the right to purchase the tram company.
 
In 1929, the General Small Railway Company changed its name to the Electrical road railway (ECŽ) and after 1930 the city started rapidly modernising the vehicle fleet and the lines. They purchased new and used vehicles so that in 1940 the vehicle fleet comprised 52 units; furthermore, they expanded the tram network and connected the city centre with the suburban areas and moved the tram depot and repair workshops to Celovška cesta.

Trolleybus – to shake you

After the war, Ljubljana started expanding quickly and the tram was no longer capable of covering the growing needs in the city. When personal cars invaded the roads, this was one more reason to rearrange the traffic regulation in the streets of Ljubljana, so that personal cars would get more room on the roadway surfaces. In May 1953, the Municipal People’s Council of Ljubljana established a committee that prepared the proposal on the transition of the urban traffic from the tram to the trolleybus and bus.
 
This transition was gradual. In the middle of the fifties, the first regular trolleybuses and buses started driving around the city and in 1958 when the tram was finally removed from the roads, the then “ECŽ” changed its name into “Ljubljana-Transport”. The tram took its final ride on 20 December 1958, surrounded by a large group of the inhabitants of Ljubljana. In front of the city hall Frane Milčinski Ježek, dressed as Franz Joseph, said goodbye to it, while the entire ceremony was broadcast by the radio; many citizens still have very nostalgic memories of the occasion.
 
Just like trams, the trolley buses used electricity for their operation and therefore depended on the electrical lines around the city. Unfortunately, the experience with the operation of trolleybuses was not very positive.
 
The trolley which supplied the electricity often “fell off” the trolleybus and it had to be replaced each time. There were big problems with the snow during the winter when salt had to be spread on the roads. The saltwater which got into contact with the electricity supply namely caused short-circuit. It sometimes happened that the entire body of a trolleybus was charged with electricity. The passengers that entered the trolleybus felt this, as they were vigorously shaken if they touched the metal parts of the vehicle. Trolleybus took its last ride around Ljubljana on 4 September 1971 on the line Vižmarje-Vič, and after that it was completely replaced by buses.

From Viator to Integral to LPP

The sixties and seventies of the previous century brought non-expected development of the urban public transport and the company, which changed its name to Viator in 1971, gradually expanded its operations throughout Slovenia. The development of one activity continued into the development of another and the scope of activities was thus expanded to interurban, cargo and tourist transport services, which stimulated the development of tourist agencies and afterwards the construction and acquisition of cableways. There was only a small step from transport and tourism to catering and taxi service.
 
In 1977, Viator merged with the company SAP and the result was the company with the name SOZD SAP-VIATOR, in the scope of which the organisation Urban passenger traffic (Mestni potniški promet) was already operating.
 
What followed was further mergers and alliances between different traffic, tourist and hotel organisations all over Slovenia which is why on 25 March 1981 Viator became part of SOZD INTEGRAL. At that time, its present name appeared for the first time, namely as a work organisation “Ljubljanski potniški promet”. Integral was a real giant and it is so deeply rooted in the minds of the people that many of them still use that name, even though the LPP has been operating as an independent public company for more than 15 years.
 
Then the year 1989 came when LPP decided to leave Integral, because there was no further development potential in the sense of the organisational and business strategy that would allow further development of this activity for Ljubljana, its inhabitants, visitors and its suburban areas. LPP thus became a public company in the service of the people of our capital city and all those who live in the suburban municipalities.
 
Since 1994 we operate as a public company, limited liability company, in the scope of Javni Holding Ljubljana.