However, the system is being neglected, the serviced track length is decreasing at a fast rate and is replaced by buses and trolleybuses.

[4] In 1886, engineer Amand Struve's project was approved for construction, and the Kyiv City Railway Society joint-stock company was founded in 1889.

When the Podil line was extended to the Poshtova Square, a pair of horses was not enough to pull a tramcar uphill.

They were built by the Struve brothers in a factory located near Moscow, based on American designs.

In 1893, the Elektrichestvo journal wrote: If Kyiv's terrain had not been so unique, then it would have taken many years before electricity would have been used to power the trams.

When the city's railroad stockholder Lazar Brodsky died, the stock was transferred to a Belgian auction firm, and the tram system began running with Belgian Pullman tramcars with soft, sail-type cloth seats.

In 1912 long gasoline tram line about 17 versts (18 kilometers) long, was laid from the Poshtova Square, across the Dnipro river on the Mykolaivskyi Bridge, through the Peredmostna and Nikolska Slobodka neighborhoods, and to the neighboring town of Brovary.

The old and outdated tramcars required restoration as the industry of the country could not manufacture new rolling stock.

In the 1930s, various tram expansion projects were proposed, featuring the lines in Shevchenkivskyi and Solomianskyi Districts, as well as connections with the left bank of the city.

Most of the projects were cancelled because of the introduction of the Kyiv trolleybus system, which also caused the dismantling of the tram line in city center.

In 1936 the tram network had reached the Darnytsia Wagon Repair Plant (DVRZ).

The tram network in the city center incurred heavy damage which would not be restored during the war.

On March 13, 1961, a major landslide hit the city's Podilske Tram Depot, burying it in clay sludge and killing most personnel on site.

Additionally, dozens of people died in the tram cars and buses caught by the landslide and subsequent electrical fault and short circuit on the street intersection immediately next to the depot.

[6] The same year Kyiv experienced the peak in tram routes development in its history.

In 1978 the length of the lines reached 285 km, the fleet numbered 909 cars, and passenger traffic per year exceeded 396 million people.

Under his rule in 1996-2006 the city began the car-centric development and the tram was believed to cause traffic jams.

Eventually further reconstructions of the bridge caused more traffic jams on the newly added lines that only enworsed the structure's state.