History
Transit service began in 1890 by the National Electric Tramway and Light Company with four street cars. On May 26, 1896 a packed streetcar crashed through the Point Ellice Bridge and 55 people were killed. The Consolidated Electric Railway Company was forced into receivership by the disaster and emerged reorganized as the British Columbia Electric Railway on April 15, 1897.
The use of buses started in 1923 for outlying routes. Although trolley buses were tried in 1945, the transit system was completely converted to motor buses in 1948. In 1961 BC Electric became part of BC Hydro, a Crown corporation, before the transit system was moved to the crown agency that would become BC Transit. In 2000 Victoria became the first city in North America to use double decker buses in regular public transit service as well as the first city to use hybrid double-decker buses.
Read more about this topic: Victoria Regional Transit System
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“Look through the whole history of countries professing the Romish religion, and you will uniformly find the leaven of this besetting and accursed principle of action—that the end will sanction any means.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)