At the turn of the twentieth century the population of Birkirkara had risen over the eight thousand figure. Gradually it continued to its image of a rural village, becoming more and more a residential area for those who found employment in the capital or the immediate port area - of these the number of Karkari\i themselves was always on the increase. They were abandoning the ancient terraced fields and the old trades by which they had lived up till then, to take up employment in state departments and corporations or private firms and industries. This increased during the sixties when two industrial estates were established in its immediate outskirts, which, besides other types of development, swallowed up a large part of the arable land then still available. In the opening decades of this century, the demographic growth of Birkirkara was also made possible by the introduction of new means of transport which made of it a convenient residential area just on the edges of the port-industries zone. To the railway service already in operation the tramway was introduced in 1903. But by 1931 both these services succumbed to the bus service which started in the twenties, and has remained since the principal means of public transport on the islands.