The decision made at that time is still valid until today, all Frankfurt street and subway lines have this track, even if the draft horses were long ago displaced by electric railcars.

Only a year earlier, on 16 May 1881, the world's first electrically operated test track in Lichterfelde near Berlin had opened for traffic, and on 1 May 1882 the second from Charlottenburg to the restaurant Spandauer Bock.

At the end of 1883, the concession was granted and soon after the consortium started construction and founded an operating company, the Frankfurt-Offenbach Tramway Society (FOTG).

The route led from the Eschenheimer Tor on the northern edge of the city center on the Eschersheimer road to the neighboring village about 5 km (3.1 mi) north.

Another private company, Hostmann & Cie. from Hanover, received in 1887 the concession to build railway lines in the south of the city and to operate them for a period of 35 years.

The steam locomotives used caused displeasure among the residents of the streets in Sachsenhausen and were the reason why the line was not allowed to operate into Frankfurt city center.

The main reason for these attempts were critical voices, which fought against the catenary of an electric tram because of the feared "blighting the cityscape", although the experience had already clearly demonstrated the technical superiority of the trolley system.

For example, the heavy accumulator vehicles resulted in considerable damage to the tracks of the horse tram designed only for low axle load.

The Frankfurt Lokalbahn AG was able to open in October 1899 in addition to its steam tram in the Eschersheimer highway a second route: the so-called mountain railway began at the station Oberursel the Homburger Bahn and ran over 4.5 km (2.8 mi) to the terminus Hohemark in the Taunus.

The starting point was the eastern entrance of the Palmengarten on the Siesmayerstraße, from there it went over the Feldbergstraße, the Grüneburgweg and the Reuterweg to the Opernplatz, then over the Neue Mainzer Straße and the Untermainbrücke to the Schweizer Platz.

In 1906, the cities of Frankfurt and Offenbach took over the line of the FOTG, which remained a foreign body in the network due to their deviating gauge and their exotic drive technology.

The FLAG, which had sold its Eschersheimer Lokalbahn to the city in 1901, now saw its task in the creation of a connection between the freshly electrified Frankfurt tram network and the isolated routes in Bad Homburg and Oberursel.

A D-railcar was firmly connected in 1930 with a d-sidecar to save a conductor per train can, to speed up the passenger change and electropneumatic remote controllable doors were installed.

However, the concept could not prevail, so that the designated Dd vehicle remained a unique piece and was used until the outbreak of World War II mainly for city tours.

The use of foreign workers from occupied Western European countries and high-speed students helped offset this temporarily, while urban bus transport came to a virtual standstill due to fuel and vehicle shortages.

A special episode during World War II represented the freight traffic, which was established by the Frankfurter and Offenbacher tram to maintain the supply of the population with food and later also heating material (coke) in addition to passenger transport.

After the clearing of the city center and the restoration of tracks and overhead line was already in 1946 on most routes a modest tram traffic to be carried out, which, however, was still affected by the blown Main bridges and a chronic vehicle shortage.

Only on the not completely blown up Wilhelmsbrücke (today's peace bridge) a single track was available, on which because of the strong military traffic exclusively at night cars could change the Mainseite.

At times, the vehicles had even been painted olive green with colors from army remnants to make them more easily distinguishable from conventional streetcars.

The lines 23, 24 and 25 from the city center in the direction of Heddernheim and Taunus had until June 1948 bypass the restricted area on the Eckenheimer highway and built in 1945 track on the Marbachweg.

On 22 January 1953 the extension that was planned before the war from Nied to Höchst and a connection from Bornheim to Riederwald (today's line 12) was opened on 31 March 1957 finally followed the commissioning of the route in the then still independent Enkheim – it should remain for over 40 years, the last network expansion of the tram.

Even personalities like Professor Bernhard Grzimek and the subsequent DGB regional chairman Dieter Hooge expressed public criticism of the concept.

The municipal change of government in 1977 did not alter this plan, which took concrete shape under the new Lord Mayor Walter Wallmann in the form of the development concept "Rail-free city center".

The new Lord Mayor Wolfram Brück, who was elected on 14 August 1986, escalated the conflict in a manner he later acknowledged as a grave political mistake.

But since the beginning of the 1990s, the direction of Frankfurt's urban traffic policy has changed and its tramways have been renovated and expanded, with a new route, Line 18, opening in 2011.

Furthermore, on "Reuterweg" and "Mainzer Landstraße" two lanes in each direction are needed to cover the high amount of individual traffic and could not be dedicated as a tram line.

The route branches north of Heddernheim were always a special feature of the tram network because they had a wider track profile due to the freight traffic there.

Although incorporation into the Eckenheimer Stadtbahn line opened in 1974 had been considered, the idea was eventually dropped because of operational risks and the limited capacity of the mostly single-track route.

Originally the street running part on "Eckenheimer Landstraße" should be replaced by a subway, but due to a lack of funding as well as protests from the residents in this area who feared years of construction, those plans were cancelled.

Since April 2016 the stations in the street running part on "Eckenheimer Landstraße" are being conversed in to high-level platforms to fit the new "U5-25/U5-50-type" subway cars.