The story
The decision to provide Livorno with a public transport system dates back to 1875 with a horse-drawn tram line. The line was inaugurated on 22 May 1881 and the route, following the course of the sea-promenade, developed from the city center to Ardenza.
On 13 October 1897 the first electric tram was activated and the line started from the San Marco Station to Antignano; at the end of 1906 those with animal traction were definitively replaced by electric tram. On 15 May 1908 was formed a new company and the management passed to the Società Livornese a Trazione Elettrica (SLTE); on 19 August was inaugurated the Montenero funicular in order to connect, lower Montenero to the Sanctuary, placed on the highest part of the hill. In 1930 the tramways network consisted of nine lines and in January 1935 the service was gradually transformed into a trolleybus system.
The Società Trasporti Urbani (STU), a company of the FIAT group, was formed for restructuring the trolleybus service with a fifteen years contract; the program was completed planning eight lines and reducing progressively to two those of the tramways.
The disastrous bombing of Livorno in the Second World War caused extensive damage to the public transport system. After the war a council resolution approved, on 15 October 1949, to entrust the management of the trolleybus network to Azienda Trasporti Autofiloviari Municipale (ATAM) just formed for the occurrence. In 1960 the buses were introduced in service, bringing to a lower use of the trolleybuses to a fewer longest routes. In 1974, because to the oil crisis, the ATAM Board of Directors decided to dismantle the entire trolley system in order to reduce the electric energy consumption.
The ATAM management ended on 31 December 1978 and the following day the urban transport was succeeded by Azienda Consorziale Interprovinciale Trasporti (ACIT), which merged the public transport of Pisa and Livorno. ACIT, being the largest public transport company in Tuscany, revealed enormous structural limitations by borrowing beyond forecasts.
The inevitability financial collapse determined the division of the Company into two separate companies, the Azienda Trasporti Livornese (ATL) in Livorno and the Azienda Pisana Trasporti (APT) in Pisa, starting from 1 April 1987.
ATL tried to meet the new market needs and assumed a more efficient and economical structure becoming Società per Azioni.
On 21 October 2012 ATL was liquidated and the activities and assets merged into the newly formed Compagnia Toscana Trasporti Nord (CTTNord).
From Wikipedia’s article on Azienda Trasporti Livornese, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4