Buenos Aires TramwaysBy when we returned in 1969 Buenos Aires tramways had vanished except for the vestiges of steel tracks neatly nailed into the stone paved streets and hanging electric wires giving the city a somewhat romantic aura of past times.
Most of the stone paved streets and rails have now disappeared under the modern asphalt, it's what we humans do to entertain future archeological diggers, don't we? But here is an actual example of a stone paved street as they used to be. The child playing with the puppet is my son Santiago as we visited San Telmo, one the oldest neighborhoods of the city that still preserves some original stone paved streets.
I can hear those street rails screaming for the tramways to come back. Will Porteños hear them?
Buenos Aires tramways used to be the most popular means of transportation and they reined for almost a century.
The first two lines of horse-pulled tramways started running in 1870.
It was 1897 when the first electrical tramway was inaugurated. It ran at a top speed of 30 km /hour or 19 miles per hour on Las Heras Avenue running to Italy Square. Newspapers of the time judged it was a devilish apparatus that devoured distances at demoniac speeds and only apt for use by adventurers. 
By 1939 Buenos Aires had one of the largest tramway networks in the world with almost 800 km (500 miles) of rails, more than 100 lines that crisscrossed the city with nearly 3000 tramway cars.
Tramways and Tango Buenos Aires tramways were an inseparable part of the city until the beginnings of the 1960's when they were completely replaced by the urban bus or "colectivo". As popular as tramways were their mentioning in several famous tango lyrics was inevitable like the fallowing fragment of the tango "Camouflage" by Enrique Francini and José García. The translation more or less goes like this:
Today everything is bull, dressed as truth, 
Buenos Aires tramways became the transport of choice for a good reason. In the beginnings of the 1900's the tramway ticket price was worth 10 cents. From then and until 1949 a popular "worker-ticket" was in force worth only 5 cents if you used the tramway from 5 to 7 in the morning or after 4 in the afternoon. A policeman then earned a salary of about 60 pesos per month. The tramway was fast, reliable and cheap, what else could Porteños ask for? Want to take a ride?
Riding the Tramway
If you want to experience how it feels to ride a tramway in Buenos Aires it's possible thanks to the "Amigos del Tranvía" association that runs a tourist tramway with original restored cars for the only pleasure of maintaining a piece of this city's history alive. The tramway stop is in the corner of Emilio Mitre and José Bonifacio Streets in the neighborhood of Caballito. The service runs every 20 minutes according to the fallowing schedule: From December to February: From March to November: Believe it or not, the service is for free!
If you want to contact the
Asociación Amigos del Tranvía
please click on the link to open their webpage.
Buenos Aires tramways employed workers by the thousands all of which became part of the all powerful "Tranviario Automotor" syndicate which was capable of freezing Buenos Aires activity with a strike since working people were heavily dependant on its service. This syndicate was also capable of moving and organizing giant demonstrations against or in favor of a government all of which made it of political strategic importance. Having this syndicate as friend was vital for any government.
I found some great online sources about Argentina's and Buenos Aires tramways. One fine place to read about Argentine tramway history with many outstanding epoch photographs is the
Tranvías de Córdoba website.
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