Until a few years ago, electric buses were a rarity in German mass transit. At the beginning of the millennium, they still existed in three cities: Eberswalde, Esslingen and Solingen. Since the end of the oil price crisis, the concept was no longer particularly interesting, a relic of a bygone era.
Abroad, especially in Switzerland and Eastern Europe, it was always different. The cities in Germany that never got rid of their trolleybuses are happy about it: “We in Eberswalde love our trolleybus, the ‘Strippe’. It is an integral part of the city’s identity and definitely an important image factor. “All the better that the trolleybus with green electricity is also making a contribution to the traffic turnaround,” says Anne Fellner, First Deputy Mayor and Head of the Building Department of the City of Eberswalde. To understand why she is so enthusiastic and the trolleybus leads a shadowy existence at the same time, it is worth taking a look at the history of trolleybuses.