Verkehrsbetriebe Biel/Transports publics biennois
company
The Verkehrsbetriebe Biel (in German) or Transports publics biennois (in French) is a public transport operator in and around the bilingual city of Biel/Bienne, in the Swiss canton of Bern. It operates the city's network of trolleybuses, motor buses, and funicular railways. It is also known by its respective initials as VB/Tpb.
History
From 1877, Biel/Bienne was served by horse-drawn trams, operated by the Compagnie générale des tramways suisses of Geneva. In 1901, the City of Biel/Bienne took over operations and, over the following two years, converted the system to electric operation. The city's first buses operated in 1926, and the first trolleybuses in 1940. The last trams operated in 1948, when route 1 was converted to trolleybus operation.
In 2001, VB/Tpb was created as an independent company owned by the city. In 2014, it also took over the town's two funicular railways:
Biel/Bienne–Leubringen/Evilard
Biel/Bienne–Magglingen/Macolin
Operation
The company operates two trolleybus lines, 11 motorbus lines and two funicular lines, with a total length of 175 kilometres (109 mi). Its fleet includes over 60 vehicles and it has 253 employees.
“Verkehrsbetriebe Biel/Transports publics biennois” enters the record as company. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Verkehrsbetriebe, Biel and Transports can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q52245. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1877, 1901, 1926 and 1940.
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This entry incorporates text from “Verkehrsbetriebe Biel/Transports publics biennois” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.