Vancouver has been celebrating 70 years of operating a trolleybus system this August, and that's a long time of life on the wires.
All these decades later, and we are the last Canadian city to operate a trolleybus system, with one of the biggest such systems in all of North America.
How did we make the shift from streetcars to these clean energy electric-powered buses 70 years ago? This video from a member of the Transit Museum Society of B.C. (the group that owns and maintains a small fleet of vintage Vancouver transit vehicles) covers the backstory of the city's relationship with trolleybuses.
Related:
- Celebrating 70 years of trolleybuses in Vancouver (PHOTOS, VIDEO)
- You can ride through Vancouver on this vintage 1954 trolleybus
Maybe even more importantly, the video explains just how they work, and what the drivers had to do in order to not get lost--because, yes, you can get lost driving a bus connected by poles to overhead wires!
It's a longer video, but it's worth it if you've ever wondered about the mechanics of these specialized buses, and it could even make you proud to be a Vancouverite, considering how unique these trolleybuses make us today.
It might even make you curb those grumbles when your trolleybus goes off its wires, or is running late.
