Numerous private and municipal operating companies constructed new routes, so by the end of the 19th century the network had developed quite rapidly, and the horse trams had been replaced by electric ones.

After World War II, BVG was divided into an eastern and a western company but was once again reunited in 1992, after the fall of East Germany.

On 22 June 1865, the opening of Berlin's first horse tramway marked the beginning of the age of trams in Germany, stretching from Brandenburger Tor along today's Straße des 17.

Like the horse-bus, many companies took advantage of the new development and built horse-tram networks in all parts of today's urban area.

In the village of Groß-Lichterfelde, which was incorporated into Berlin-Steglitz 39 years later, Werner von Siemens opened the world's first electric tramway.

The first tests of electric traction on Berlin's standard gauge began on 1 May 1882, with overhead supply and in 1886 with batteries, were not very successful.

Besides the private companies, which often changed because of takeovers, mergers, and bankruptcies, the cities of Berlin, Spandau, Köpenick, Rixdorf; the villages Steglitz, Mariendorf, Britz, Niederschönhausen, Friedrichshagen, Heiligensee and Französisch Buchholz, and the Kreis Teltow (Teltow district) had municipal tram companies.

On the day of its formation, the BVG had 89 tram lines: a network of 634 km (394 mi) in length, over 4,000 tramway cars, and more than 14,400 employees.

Prior to the battle, many destroyed and gutted trams were turned into makeshift roadblocks (being pushed by civilians/Volkssturm militia) into the middle of streets and mostly filled with piles of building rubble to serve as solid obstacles) through major roads in the city to halt the advance of Soviet tanks and vehicles invading Berlin.

From that moment, planning aimed at discontinuing the tram service and replacing it with extended underground and bus lines.

(In addition to bus and U-Bahn lines, the new BVG also ran the trams, by now only operating in the former East Berlin districts).

The Rudolf-Virchow-Klinikum and the metro stations located in Seestraße, Wedding, and Osloer Straße in Gesundbrunnen have since re-connected to the tram network.

The previous route along Alt and Neu Schönhauser Straße no longer carries regular services but operates only as a feeder line.

The route, with three newly built stops, cost 13 million euros and was first serviced by lines 60 and 61 at overlapping 10-minute intervals.

There are also some minor closures: At the timetable change on 14 December 2014, a new tram line was opened from Naturkundemuseum to Hauptbahnhof via Invalidenstraße, with the final stop at Lüneburger Straße in the district of Alt-Moabit.

The double-track line is 2.3 kilometers long to the main station, and new stops have been built on the Chausseestraße, the Invalidenpark and the Hauptbahnhof.

This is followed by the 1.1 km single track block bypass that has three stops at Lesser-Ury-Weg, Lueneburger Straße and Clara Jaschke-Straße, as well as the installation area.

The Ministry of Transport revised the 50 metres of the length, a two-meter-wide strip of garden to the state of Berlin to provide enough space for all road users.

[15] The first horse-drawn tramlines did not use any special labeling as they were radially inferior from the respective endpoints in the center and thus had few points of contact with other lines.

With the merger of companies for the Berlin tram, the GBS's numbering scheme was extended to cover the rest of the network.

With the outbreak of the Second World War, the Berlin public transport companies had to stop a large part of the bus traffic to save fuel.

Tram line 68 was named by the National Geographic Society as one of the ten great streetcar routes worldwide.

This route serves the residential areas around the Zwickauer Damm and the Eisenhutweg, making for a better public transport connection.

For this route, space was reserved for the tram tracks as a preliminary step in the construction of the Hermann-Gladenbeck Bridge over the A-113 and the Massantenbrücke over the Teltowkanal 2004.

Likewise, the existing track bed of the Neukölln-Mittenwalder railway can be used behind the Massantenbrücke or Hermann-Gladenbeck bridge, which is just a short distance behind the underground station at Zwickauer Damm.

There are low floor six-axle double articulated GTU, GTO and GTZO (formerly GT6N and GT6N-ZR) trams in unidirectional and bidirectional versions, and since 2008, the Bombardier Flexity Berlin.

The reduction is possible because the new low-floor cars on average achieve more than twice the mileage per year (100,000 km (62,137 mi)), and, being longer, carry more passengers and therefore rarely operate in multiple.

[25] Identically to 1506 and 1516 the first 77 cars were provided with a new drive technology and new software and upgraded to type GTU trains in the years 2012 – 2016.

In June 2012 the supervisory board approved the BVG 2nd Serial recall of an additional 39 trams of type "Flexity Berlin".

Thus, the SNB responds to both the very positive development of passenger numbers at the tram and allows bidirectional vehicles the eventual abandonment of turning loops and enhancing the design stops.