In world history, 1941 is a year that will, well, live in infamy, as Franklin D. Roosevelt said upon asking for a declaration of war on Japan. Europe and Asia were fully engaged in bloody warfare the entire year, while the United States was inching slowly closer until Pearl Harbor on December 7.
In the San Francisco of 75 years ago, it was a time of tension, here on the edge of the Pacific. It was also a time of transition, as economic currents that had been swirling for years brought major and lasting changes in the city’s networks. It was a year of sad endings and auspicious beginnings.
That year, 1941, the 29-year old Municipal Railway, the first publicly owned transit operation in America, was ferociously competing with its larger private competitor, Market Street Railway Co. (MSRy), which with its predecessor companies had dominated San Francisco transit for almost a half century and carried twice as many passengers as Muni.
Yet it was an increasingly unfair fight.
MSRy and its predecessors operated under a franchise system, in which the city had granted them the right to put tracks on certain streets, in exchange for which the company provided a certain level of service. With many legacy streetcar lines that didn’t attract many riders but had to be served to retain the franchise, Market Street Railway had a higher cost structure than the leaner Muni and was experiencing greater financial problems year after year.
Fares were regulated by the State Railroad Commission, and had been pegged at five cents since the 19th century. Market Street Railway resisted asking for an increase as long as possible for fear of losing riders to Muni, making San Francisco the last major U.S. city to give up the nickel fare. Even though MSR won a 40 percent fare increase (to seven cents!) effective at the beginning of 1939, MSRy was nonetheless reeling financially because the courts had voided its attempt to run many of its streetcar routes with a single operator, instead of the traditional motorman-conductor team.
With little capital available, MSRy faced a tough choice: somehow scrape up money to buy buses, which could be run by a single operator and would suffice on lesser routes, or continue paying the salaries of two crew members and keep using worn out streetcars, running on worn out track. They opted for a mix. Several lines, including the 19-Polk, were partially converted to buses in 1939, but some streetcars returned to the 19 the following year. A deeper financial analysis by MSRy made it clear that some historic parts of the system, however, had to be
‘busified’ permanently.
Fillmore counterbalance
The 22-Fillmore streetcar was MSRy’s busiest crosstown line in 1941. But the line ended abruptly at Broadway and Fillmore in Pacific Heights because of the extremely steep grade on Fillmore the next two blocks to Union. Since 1895, the hill was served by a unique counterbalance system: tiny, single truck electric streetcars (of the same type as preserved No. 578) that connected to an underground, unpowered cable at the top and bottom of the two-block hill between Broadway and Green Street. The cable attached to the downhill car would help pull the one below up the hill. At the bottom, the car would unhook from the cable and continue to Bay Street (which really was the Bay shore back then). In 1925, as the new Marina neighborhood was built on fill, the line was extended to Marina Boulevard.
This unique line was a favorite of railfans back then, but the combination of tiny cars, two-person crews, and keeping up the special infrastructure made it an increasing money loser for MSRy. Accordingly, the line was shut down on April 6, 1941, replaced at the same time as another legacy service two miles south.
Castro cable
Cable car service started on Castro Street in 1886 as part of the huge MSRy network of five lines that ran up Market from the Ferry Building and radiated west and south on streets that also included McAllister, Hayes, Haight (all three still Muni bus lines today), and Valencia.
After the 1906 Earthquake and Fire destroyed the Market Street cable infrastructure and MSRy’s predecessor United Railroads bribed the Board of Supervisors and Mayor to allow electric streetcars to take over on Market, cable car service on Castro between 18th Street and 26th Street was retained because the hill on Castro between Eureka Valley and Noe Valley was way too steep for streetcars. The Castro line trundled over the hill, consistently losing money, decade after decade, until MSRy decided to pull a triple play: kill the Fillmore counterbalance, the Castro cable, and the unprofitable 24-Divisadero streetcar and combine them into one long bus route. Accordingly, the Castro cable gave up the ghost on April 5, 1941, one day before the Fillmore counterbalance. Most of the bus route, of course, is still part of today’s 24-Divisadero trolley bus line.
Sacramento-Clay cable
Also in 1941, MSRy laid the plans to convert another unprofitable cable car route, on Sacramento and Clay Streets, to buses. The line, part of which made up the world’s first cable car line in 1873, had long suffered from strong competition just a block away from the California Street Cable Railroad, a small company that soldiered on against the much bigger Muni and MSRy. (Muni finally absorbed Cal Cable in 1951.) The conversion to buses took place on February 25, 1942. The cable cars themselves were kept in the Washington-Mason car barn (which they shared with the cars of the Powell lines) until after World War II, when almost all were scrapped. Sacramento-Clay Car 19, however, was preserved by Muni, and with Market Street Railway’s advocacy was restored ten years ago.
Third Street lines
The industrial Bay front of the city, from South of Market to Bayshore, was served by MSRy’s Third Street lines—the 15, 16, and 29, which served various portions of the corridor. Here too, labor costs of two-person streetcars drove MSRy to end streetcar service in favor of buses. Streetcar service on Third Street ended September 12, 1941, supposedly for good, though some streetcars reemerged during World War II on the 15-line operating south on Third Street as far as Mariposa to service the nearby shipyard at Pier 70. Full-time streetcar service finally returned to Third Street with Muni’s T-line in 2007.
On the Muni Side
Though it had the city government (and hence taxpayers) behind it, Muni was still expected to make an operating profit in 1941. Labor costs were beginning to squeeze it as well, though not as much as they did MSRy. Muni was also looking to erode MSRy’s route network where it could. Here, the franchise system helped.
MSRy had an unprofitable streetcar line, the 35-Howard, which ran from the Ferry Building out Howard and then South Van Ness to 24th Street. Its franchise had expired in 1939, and the city declined to renew it. Muni was free to take over.
But it had no intention of doing so with streetcars. Muni decided to open its first trolley bus line instead. MSRy had converted the two-operator 33-line streetcar across Twin Peaks to single-operator electric trolley buses in 1935 and enjoyed improved financial returns as a result. All that was required was putting up a second overhead wire to serve as the ground for the electric bus, allowing continued use of the electric infrastructure already in place. After an interim period of motor coach operation while wires were strung, the R-Howard trolley coach line opened on September 7, 1941, using ten new buses build by Saint Louis Car Company that looked a lot like modern PCC streetcars. (Our organization brought the sole surviving bus of that group, 506, back to San Francisco and cosmetically restored it. We hope to return it to operating condition soon.)
The R-Howard line gave Muni more inroads into the Mission District, long an MSRy stronghold. The new trolley coaches with their padded seats provided a more comfortable ride than the rickety MSRy streetcars on the 14 and other Mission lines just a block away, and the new buses only cost a nickel to ride, instead of seven cents (though it sounds trivial now, it mattered to many working class people then).
And Muni had bigger plans for trolley buses. The combination of lower labor costs and the excellent hill climbing ability of the electric buses was especially attractive in San Francisco. Even though the R-line had no hills, the E-Union line, which snaked over Russian Hill and Cow Hollow using small single-truck ‘dinky’ streetcars, certainly did, and was a money loser to boot. In 1941, Muni had ordered trolley buses and overhead to convert the E-line, but after Pearl Harbor, the federal government put itself in charge of allocating all transportation equipment, including buses, and the order was held up. In fact, Muni had to fight the federal government to keep its new R-line trolley buses from being shipped off to New Orleans.
After the war, Muni proceeded with the conversion of the E-Union to trolley coach, combining it with the R-line in 1947, and redesignating it the 41-Union-Howard in 1949. If the war had not intervened, it is likely some other streetcar lines would have been converted to trolley coach operation sooner. As it was, the electric buses had taken over 18 streetcar routes by 1951.
A seminal year
Looking back, we can see how important 1941 was to the direction of San Francisco transit. Quaint operations that had been kept on for decades beyond their technological obsolescence finally gave way under the crush of raw economics, as the costs of moving people around the city began outstripping what the operators could collect from the farebox. Newer technologies, like trolley buses, were planted, rapidly taking root after the fighting stopped in 1945.
Perhaps of biggest impact: the city’s extensive rail infrastructure was teetering, with tracks, overhead, and the cars themselves nearing the end of their useful lives. The private MSRy had no capital to renew this infrastructure, a fact that helped convince voters to finally approve buying MSRy out in 1944 and consolidating it with Muni, ending the dominance of streetcars in San Francisco transit. Seventy-five years ago, a lot of seeds were sown.
