Metro Tasmania  Metro Tasmania, commonly called Metro, a Tasmanian Government business enterprise, is the largest bus operator in the state of Tasmania, Australia, with operations in three of the four largest urban centres of Hobart, , and . Urban services in Devonport are provided by a private operator, Merseylink Coaches, although Metro does operate a route via Devonport which links the Mersey Community Hospital in Latrobe with the North-West Regional Hospital in Burnie. Services are provided by Metro under a range of urban and non-urban contracts with the Transport Commission, a division within the Department of State Growth. The history of Metro Tasmania dates back to 1893, when the "Hobart Electric Tramway Company" (HETCo) was founded by a London consortium. The HETCo was one of the earliest such operators in the world, and was the first electric tramway in the Southern Hemisphere. The company also operated two Dennis motorbuses prior to being taken over in 1913 by the Hobart City Council, who renamed it to "Hobart Municipal Tramways" (HMT). In 1935, HMT began to use trolleybuses on some networks to replace trams, and petrol buses were introduced on some networks in the 1940s to alleviate congestion. In 1955, a statutory authority called the "Metropolitan Transport Trust" (MTT) was formed, and this entity amalgamated the operations of the Hobart Municipal Tramways and Launceston Municipal Transport, which had been operated by the Launceston City Council as Launceston Municipal Tramways between 1911 and 1953 (when 'Tramways' was replaced by 'Transport' following the end of tram services in December 1952). The Hobart Municipal Tramways were taken over by the Trust on 1 March 1955, followed by Launceston on 1 July. At its commencement, the MTT operated trams, trolley, petrol and diesel buses, and was authorised to provide public transport services within a radius of seven miles of the Hobart and Launceston General Post Offices (GPO's). On 30 August 1959, the MTT acquired the operations of Norton Coaches, which provided bus services in the Burnie area. This resulted in the MTT operating transport services in the South, North and North-West regions of Tasmania. A year later in 1960 saw the closure of the last of Hobart's tram routes, while in 1968 electric traction was removed altogether from Tasmania's streets when the trolleybuses were retired from both Hobart and Launceston.