>>1417111Bielefeld?
>>1417528What other anons said.
Public transport saw a huge downfall after war with increasing prosperty of the common people. Cars became affordable and were seen as the future with cities following the vision of "car friendly enviroments". Trams were just a hindrance for that, something only the old, the poor, those in education and the social outsiders would use.
On the other side many cities were facing the problem of modernization. The tram systems were ran down and badly maintained during the war and new rolling stock was needed.
Many smaller and over land networks were taken out of service in the 50s, larger networks were slimmed down over time with many seeing their final hour in the 70s and 80s.
On the upside though some larger cities were already drowning in traffic during the 60s and therefore working on plans to make public transport more interesting again, which eventually led to the big lightrail and underground building boom.
Nowadays cities that used to have a tram system are even considering reintroducing them since busses are not the way to go to move the masses of people that need to go from A to B (and then there's this place called Mülheim a. d. Ruhr..).
