page_title: Beijing Bus
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Beijing Bus / History
caption_attribution_description: 中文（中国大陆）‎: 北京公交特8路公交车使用京华BK6126S型双层客车，拍摄于北京公交航天桥西场站
context_page_description: Public bus service in Beijing is the among the most extensive, widely used and affordable form of public transportation in urban and suburban districts of the city. In 2015, the entire network consisted of 876 routes with a fleet of 24,347 buses and trolleybuses carried 3.98 billion passengers annually. Trolleybuses run on over 31 routes including 6, 38, 42, 65, 101-112, 114-118, 124, 128, 301, BRT 1-3. Many of these trolleybus routes are located inside the Third Ring Road but some, such as 301 and BRT 1-3, do extend as far out as the Fifth Ring Road. Since 2013, In an effort to reduce urban air pollution, Beijing has been converting regular bus routes to trolleybus routes by installing overhead power lines on several corridors. Public bus service in the city began in 1921. Today there are two operators. The city's primary public bus operator, the state-owned Beijing Public Transport Holdings, Ltd. operates most routes and the Beijing Xianglong Bus Co., Ltd., an independent operator, provides service on 32 "Yuntong" bus routes.
context_section_description: Public bus service in Beijing dates to 1921 when the Beiyang Government established a trolley company in the city.  Tram service began in the city in 1924.  The first bus route in Beijing was launched in 1925 when the Beiping Bus Preparatory Committee acquired 30 buses for the city.  In 1947, the Beiping Municipal Bus Company was established with 133 buses, but the company shut down in August 1949 during the Chinese Civil War with 79 broken down buses and only five working buses.
  In January 1949, after the capture of Beiping by the People's Liberation Army in the Beiping-Tianjin Campaign, there were only 103 trams and 61 buses in the city, which delivered 28.85 million trips that year.  From November 1949 to March 1950, 88 U.S.-made Dodge T234 buses were shipped from Shanghai and became the mainstay of the Beijing bus fleet.  Due to fuel shortages caused by a US-imposed trade embargo, the buses were converted to burn wood.
  In the early 1950s, the bus fleet expanded with imports from Eastern Europe, including 76 Ikarus Bus from Hungary. Among the most advanced vehicles were Škoda buses from Czechoslavakia, which could carry 50 passengers and reach a speed of 60 km/h.   A total of 52 Škoda-built trolleybuses were acquired, all being of that maker's 8Tr model.
  The first domestic made buses entered service in 1956.  They were trucks made in Changchun with wooden carriages added by the Beijing Passenger Vehicle Factory.  Later, the BK640 bus used metal carriages modeled upon Skoda buses.  Domestic buses gradually replaced imports.
  By 1956, there were 27 bus and tram bus routes, totaling 357 km (222 mi) in length which delivered 235 million trips. In 1958, the first long-distance bus company was established in the city with 114 vehicles, 54 routes and 9.69 million rides delivered.  From 1956 to 1966, trolleybuses gradually replaced trams in the city and the number of bus lines grew from 27 to 56 and the length routes reached 157 km (98 mi).  During the Great Leap Forward, due to diesel shortages caused by the cut-off of Soviet oil exports to China, 130 Beijing buses were converted to burn natural gas in 1960.  The buses, which carried fuel in an inflated bag on the roof, were converted back to burning diesel in 1964, after the discovery of oil in Daqing eased the energy shortage.
  In the 1960s to 1970s, trolleybus buses were among the most important means of surface public transportation in the city and their routes expanded beyond the old city to the inner suburbs. Trolleybus expansion ceased in the 1980s with the growth in use of buses with internal combustion engines. 
  In the 1980s to the mid-1990s, the capacity of bus service in Beijing grew slowly.  From 1984 to the end of 1995, the number of bus routes grew from 101 to 246, the number of vehicles increased by 558 or 16.6% to 3,927, and the number of rides rose by 1.06 billion to 3.11 billion, an increase of 293%. Trolleybus service remained an important backbone of surface public transit in the city with more than a dozen lines and a fleet maintained at around 600 vehicles. In 1990, the first double-decker special bus line entered service, which increased to five lines by 1995.
  During the Tiananmen Square protests in the spring of 1989, residents and students used buses and trolleybuses to block the advance of the army into the city and many vehicles were destroyed during the armed crackdown.
  In March 1997, two bombs detonated on Beijing buses.  The first bomb hit a Route 22 Bus in Xidan on the night of March 7, killing three and injuring ten.  The second bomb, one day later, claimed two more lives.  The bombings, which followed the outbreak of protests and bombings in Xinjiang, took place during the annual session of the National People's Congress and the People's Consultative Conference in Beijing, and were widely blamed on Uyghur separatists.
  In July 1997, Beijing inaugurated air-conditioned bus service with the launch of Route 808 (later Route 608 which has since been canceled) from the Summer Palace to Qianmen.
  In 1999, the first compressed natural gas buses were int
caption: Double-Decker 特8 buses (model Jinghua BK6126S) at Hangtianqiao West in 2011
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