However, the system, which used only single tracks for its two lines, was badly damaged during World War II from which its finances also emerged in a parlous condition.
In 1952, the operation having run out of funding possibilities, the Besançon trams were withdrawn: a city bus service was inaugurated in December 1952.
[2] Following a widely endorsed decision by the city authorities taken in 2005,[3] a new publicly financed two route tram network opened, formally at the end of August 2014, serving the now much enlarged Besançon conglomeration.
Besançon had been linked to Dole by rail since 7 April 1856, and since 1 June 1858 also to Belfort following completion of the line along this part of the Doubs valley.
It was commissioned by a man called Charvolin and it connected the station of Besançon-Viotte with the quarter of Tarragnoz, at one edge of the topographically challenging city centre.
Surviving archives include complaints about the trams being overcrowded, suggesting that in commercial terms this mode of transport enjoyed some success.
However, on 26 February 1896 an agreement was signed for the construction of six single-track tram lines, using a 1,000 mm (3 ft 3+3⁄8 in) metre gauge, and incorporating sufficient passing places.
The city's topography called for some sharp turns, several with a radius of only 17 metres (55 ft 9 in), and a number of dauntingly steep slopes.
[6] The TEB also obtained from the authorities consent for the withdrawal of certain loss making services and practical support for the construction of the new line.
Early in the second decade of the twentieth century Besançon also acquired two narrow gauge local steam railway services.
One of these, operated by the Compagnie des chemins de fer du Doubs and opened in 1910, was a 29 km (18 mi) service to Amathay-Vésigneux and Pontarlier.
On 16 June 1940, in order to try and hold back the German attack, all the bridges crossing the Doubs River were destroyed, which permanently amputated a large part of the Besançon tram network.
During the period of relative affluence that followed the German invasion part of the transport deficit was made up for using motor buses, but fuel for civilian use was in increasingly short supply and in 1942 the buses were requisitioned by the Germans in order to transport French citizens from the affected regions to Germany for Forced Labour Service.
In 1952 buses returned to the streets, and their arrival was accompanied, on 24 December 1952, by the ending of operations on the tram network, which had simply run out of resources.
Commissioning of the trams was accompanied by an extensive reconfiguring of the Besançon bus network, all under the control of "Ginko", the city's public transportation provider.
Following a tendering process, the Spanish tram manufacturer CAF won the contract to provide and maintain 19 low floor Urbos 3 tramsets.