Trams in Luxembourg  The first generation of trams in Luxembourg ran from 1875 to 1964, before being withdrawn from service and the tramways removed. A second generation of trams began operational service in December 2017, along a new route that will, by 2021, run from Luxembourg Airport to the Cloche d'Or business district. Luxembourg is in the process of reintroducing trams to its transport infrastructure. Construction work begun on a new tram depot on the edge of the Grünewald Forest and the Kirchberg quarter of Luxembourg City in January 2015, with the first tracks being laid in July 2016. The tramline, when fully operational, will have 24 stations connected by 16 km of tracks and have a capacity of 10,000 passengers per hour in each direction. Trams provided by the Spanish company CAF began trials on the first phase of the route in July 2017. Opened on 10 December 2017, the first phase of the route saw trams run from the depot, along Avenue John F. Kennedy, past the European district, the location of many EU institutions, before terminating at the Grand Duchess Charlotte Bridge. Here, a new funicular railway was opened on the same date allowing passengers to descend to Pfaffenthal-Kirchberg railway station for access to national and international heavy rail services running through the Pfaffenthal valley. In operation as of 27 July 2018, the second phase sees tram services extend across the Grand Duchess Charlotte Bridge to Place de l'Étoile in the Limpertsberg quarter. The third phase, to be completed between 2019 and 2020, will see trams extend into the historical Ville Haute quarter, across the Adolphe Bridge and on to Luxembourg railway station for interchanges between national and international heavy rail services, before terminating in Bonnevoie. Work to widen and re-enforce the Adolphe Bridge, first opened in 1903, to accommodate the tramway was completed in July 2017, with a new cycle and pedestrian lane suspended beneath the existing bridge. The fourth and final stage of the route, due to be completed in 2021, will see tram services extend southwestwards from Bonnevoie to Howald, terminating at the new business district in Cloche d'Or. Concurrently, the tramline will also extend eastwards from the tram depot in the Kirchberg district to Senningerberg before terminating at Luxembourg Airport. In June 2018, the Minister for Sustainable Development and Infrastructure, François Bausch, announced that exploratory work had been undertaken for a possible future extension of the tramline alongside the A4 motorway to Foetz by 2028, and onto Luxembourg's second most populous city, Esch-sur-Alzette, by 2035.