The tramway is made up of a singular line called the A, which connects many major areas of the city, such as Tours station.

In 1898, the Compagnie des tramways de Tours was established to electrify and expand the urban network, which reached 20 km by 1900.

The tramway network suffered significant damage during World War II, especially during the bombing of Tours’ railway facilities on May 20, 1944, which destroyed the tram depot.

[3] The municipality of Hervé Chantrel and the PRUNIER ET CO group are working to route the A10 motorway through the peninsula, close to the city center.

This project, undertaken between 1968 and 1972, led to the development of a major interchange that significantly restructured the eighteenth-century boulevards along the banks of the Loire.

[4] A transport union, SITCAT, was established in 1974, but Tours did not join until 2002, following the re-election of Jean Germain as mayor in 2001, when the city had about 136,000 inhabitants.

In the early 1990s, as bus ridership began to stagnate, Tours’ mayor Jean Royer initiated studies for a dedicated lane public transport system (TCSP).

Concurrently, the creation of a dedicated bus lane on national road 10, the main north-south axis from Carrefour de la Tranchée in the north to Grandmont in the south, was studied.

Ultimately, a ground power supply was chosen for the section between the station and Place Choiseul, beyond the perimeter of the Safeguarding and Enhancement Plan (PSMV).

The tramway runs through the cities of Tours and Joué-lès-Tours from north to south, largely reusing the dedicated lane already created between the Belfry and Joué-centre.

However, it deviates from it at the level of Avenue de Grammont in order to offer better service to Tours station and the Sanitas district.

CitéTram (a consortium comprising SET and Transdev) was appointed lead contractor for the preliminary design and construction of the line in November 2008.

In September 2011, François Louault, a retired geography teacher, filed an appeal with the administrative court of Orléans, asking for the suspension of the construction work on a bridge over the Cher in the municipality of Tours.

The subsidy obtained under the Grenelle II made it possible to build an additional 2.5 km of the line to the north, and to position the maintenance centre at this terminus.

Cité Tram, led by Jean-Luc Paroissien, a Transamo engineer who has already worked on the Orléans and Le Mans tramways, is responsible for coordinating the project, managing it, monitoring the studies and administrative procedures, land acquisitions, site planning, operational communication of the site and compliance with the budget.

The main project manager is a consortium led by SYSTRA, which also includes SAFEGE and Eccta for infrastructure, Xelis for equipment and systems, as well as architecture and urban development firms Richez Associés and Ivars & Ballet.