The use of the term "Stadtbahn" in the line's name derives from the 19th century usage of the term to simply mean a railway in an urban area, in a similar way to the naming of the roughly contemporaneous Berlin Stadtbahn. It is not related to the usage of the term stadtbahn in post-World War II Germany to mean light rail lines upgraded from street tramways. The use of tram type vehicles on much of the Vienna Stadtbahn after 1925 is entirely coincidental, and happened long after the line got its name.