May 15, 1932 was perhaps the peak of San Francisco’s streetcar era. True, a few unimportant lines had been abandoned in the previous few years, but on this day, San Francisco celebrated a brand-new streetcar line: Market Street Railway’s 31-Balboa. It would be the such line with substantial new trackage until the F-line opened along the Embarcadero to Fisherman’s Wharf 68 years later.
Yet the celebration opening the 31-line was muted by the increasingly grim financial reality of operating transit in San Francisco—especially as a privately-owned enterprise that expected to make a profit.
We have recounted how a new company, Market Street Railway (MSRy), had taken over the assets of the financially overextended United Railroads in 1921. We discussed its modest growth in ridership and revenue through the 1920s, its initiative in building a fleet of streetcars with its own workforce, the refusal of voters to buy out the private company and merge it with the City’s publicly-owned Municipal Railway. And we described the bargain the City reached with MSRy as many of its important franchises to operate on City-owned streets were about to expire: surrender the franchises in exchange for a blanket operating permit good until 1956, with provision for the City to buy the private company for a negotiated price at any time.
Having Market Street Railway build the 31-Balboa line was part of that deal. Muni coveted the Balboa Street corridor for itself, thinking a new line there could snatch riders from MSRy’s 5-line two blocks south on Fulton, the edge of Golden Gate Park. By letting MSRy pay for it instead, Richmond District residents got streetcar service on Balboa (though to some extent at the expense of Muni’s B-Geary line two blocks north), and the City figured they’d gain ownership of the line one way or another within 25 years. Brand-new “California Comfort Cars” built by MSRy employees at the old Elkton Shops at Geneva and Ocean Avenues (albeit with old trucks, motors, and controllers) were assigned to the 31-line, geared differently to be quicker, earning the nickname “Balboa High Speeds.”
Depressing!
Yet the overall financial condition of MSRy was deteriorating—just as the entire nation’s was. The Great Depression was grabbing hold of economies everywhere. In San Francisco as elsewhere, people were being laid off from work and forced to economize wherever possible. This led to a sharp dropoff in transit ridership. And despite attempts to cut costs, MSRy’s finances were getting shaky. Revenues between 1930 and 1933 declined almost 20%. Muni was hit too, with ridership in 1933 down 19% from 1929 levels. In fact, Muni ridership was the lowest since 1920, when the L-Taraval was only a Sunset District shuttle, and the M-Ocean View and N-Judah were years from opening. The Depression was the primary problem for both companies, but somewhat paradoxically the continuing rise of the private automobile was too.
Since 1925, MSRy had been controlled by Byllesby Engineering & Management Corporation of Chicago, which ran several utilities around the country. One of its rising executives, Samuel Kahn, was installed as president of MSRy. Kahn embraced the City and company with determination, trying to combat its declining fortunes on two fronts: publicity, to try to increase ridership; and economies, to reduce costs.
Chasing riders
Kahn continued his marketing and public relations campaigns to draw people to his streetcars, despite the Depression. He replaced scratchy wicker with real leather seats on some streetcars, and promoted the upgrade wherever he could. He had the craftsworkers at Elkton Shops build a scale model of a California Comfort Car, which MSRy pitched to department stores for displays. He promoted all-day Sunday passes for 20¢ (later a quarter). He continued the use of the private car “San Francisco” to give schoolkids free rides, often combined with tours of Elkton Shops, to build goodwill among parents and teachers and ridership habits among the kids.
But with revenue falling, there was little budget for this kind of marketing. The only billboards the company put up were on its own property, and they sold them to other advertisers when possible. To gain more non-passenger revenue, Kahn tried things like turning streetcars into rolling billboards (without passengers) in the 1930s. That had a short life, though, since the exterior shroud made the cars too wide to fit on the inner Market Street tracks, depriving advertisers of critical visibility. MSRy even projected a Harold Lloyd movie inside a streetcar, no doubt mostly for publicity (though they likely collected fares, too).
“One-man” Hail Mary
None of these peripheral attempts at improving the bottom line made a real difference. Salvation seemed tied to reducing costs. And no cost was greater than labor.
With just a few exceptions, San Francisco transit vehicles had always carried a crew of two operators. One such exception was the Visitacion Valley line along the southern edge of the City during World War I. The line was normally little used, and MSRy’s predecessor, United Railroads, converted its streetcars to be operated without a conductor. But on the early morning of July 13, 1918, Car 1022 was packed with wartime workers going east from their Mission District homes to a shipbuilding plant on the Bay.
The “one-man” car lost its air brakes at the top of the grade near what’s now the Cow Palace, and careened down the right-of-way (now Geneva Avenue), overturning at a curve, killing 8 and injuring 70. It was the worst streetcar accident in San Francisco history, and United Railroads was quick to blame “either vicious hoodlums or German sympathizers” for it, referring to continuing bad blood from a contentious strike the year before, or the war. While it is far from certain that having a conductor at the back of the car would have averted the tragedy, within days the City’s Board of Supervisors unanimously passed an ordinance requiring two operators on every streetcar within city limits.
Under the terms of its franchises, MSRy was compelled to operate a number of streetcar lines with relatively few riders. Keeping detailed records of each line’s financial performance, it was clear that many lines were increasingly losing money. By 1933, the situation was serious enough that MSRy requested the Board of Supervisors to repeal the two-operator requirement. The board refused, but MSRy won a temporary injunction against enforcing the ordinance in 1934, and started preparing for single-operator service.
The first “one-man” streetcar (women were discriminated against for conductor and motorman jobs until World War II) appeared in March 1935 on the 36-Folsom line. Other lines soon followed, including busy crosstown routes like the 22-Fillmore and 19-Polk. The company converted many two-operator streetcars by putting doors on the open platforms, and bought second-hand single operator streetcars wherever they could find them.
These “new” (to MSRy) cars were often faster and more modern looking. Assigned to less-ridden lines south of Market Street, they improved patronage through faster service. On the heavier lines, though, service was slowed by the need for the motorman to collect fares as riders boarded through the front door (a novel experience for San Franciscans). For this reason, there was no attempt to convert lines on Market Street itself, nor the primary Mission Street lines.
Muni did not follow suit, both because it had few lightly-traveled lines (most notably the M-Ocean View, at that time a shuttle west of the Twin Peaks Tunnel), and because the City was working in court to overturn the injunction allowing one-operator service.
The savings from single operator streetcars in 1935 were partially offset by increased wages brought about by unionization of most of MSRy’s workforce the year before. This led to service cuts and other economies which yielded a break-even year overall. One such economy was the replacement of streetcars on the crosstown 33-line (via Harrison and 18th Streets across Twin Peaks to Golden Gate Park) with San Francisco’s first trolley coaches. Buses ensured a single-person crew even if the two-man streetcar injunction were ultimately overturned.
Revenues increased 2.5% in 1936 but then dropped 4.4% in 1937. Ridership fell as the first full year of Bay Bridge operation diverted many East Bay commuters from the ferry service to their private automobiles and strikes around the city kept other commuters at home.
The financial situation led MSRy to sell half of its full block in the Sunset District, at 21st Avenue and Ortega Street, from which it mined sand to aid streetcars in braking. New homes quickly rose from the dunes. It also sold its Pacific Avenue cable car barn, empty since abandonment eight years before. The right-of-way in Vistacion Valley was also sold, to the City to build Geneva Avenue. MSRy got the okay to run buses there.
Throughout this period, the company sought economies wherever it could. One example: it stopped painting the window sash red on the sides and ends of the “White Front” streetcars and cable cars. The ends became all-white, the sides all green to save labor. But to demonstrate a bit of schizophrenia between economy and marketing, when Muni acquired its first modern streetcars, the PCC look-alike “Magic Carpets,” in 1939, MSRy started painting a sleek looking white “zip stripe” on the sides of its old boxy streetcars, with yellow trim and a solid yellow roof. Dozens of streetcars were painted this way before World War II, which stopped the project.
The seemingly unchangeable five cent fare was a huge albatross to MSRy. San Francisco was the last city in the country sticking to a nickel fare, which dated back at least 75 years. The State Railroad Commission (yes, that was a thing then) regulated fares city by city at that time. The commission denied MSRy’s 1937 application to raise the cash fare to seven cents, keeping the sacrosanct nickel fare but allowing the company to charge two cents for a transfer. Muni stuck to free transfers, gaining a fare advantage over MSRy for the first time. But the one-man injunction was still in effect, and MSRy now had 174 single-operator cars and at least some reason for hope.
Not for long. The company took several body blows in 1938. When the State Railroad Commission finally granted MSRy a seven-cent cash fare in May (albeit with a discount for tokens), Muni and the California Street Cable Railroad Company, which kept the five-cent fare, both increased service on parallel lines, sapping business from MSRy. Many riders along Market Street chose to save the two pennies by taking Muni (this seems crazy by today’s standards but as the Depression lingered, two cents mattered for tens of thousands of San Franciscans.)
MSRy responded by asking the Board of Supervisors to outlaw jitney competition on Mission Street, one of MSRy’s most important lines (jitneys were prohibited on any street Muni served) and to okay abandonment of a couple of routes. The board refused. The company then asked the Railroad Commission to eliminate the token discount. The Commission said it would, but only if the company went back to the Board of Supervisors on the jitney matter and a longer list of requested abandonments. The board refused again, but at least the company got a little more fare relief.
But in July 1938, the biggest hammer of all dropped, as the US Court of Appeals overturned the injunction allowing one-man streetcar crews. The company’s “Hail Mary” appeal to the US Supreme Court was turned down and the company was ordered to eliminate all one-man cars within six months. Planning started for more bus conversions immediately. Two car barns were shut down to save money, jamming the displaced streetcars into other barns until newly-ordered buses could go into service.
That same year, voters turned down another attempt to buy MSRy, this time for $12.5 million. Changes in security laws caused Byllesby to spin off MSRy to its local group headed by Samuel Kahn. He and his small management team stayed in place to continue the struggle, as revenues for the year plummeted 10%.
The long good-bye
1939 opened with something that seemed promising: the opening on January 15 of the Transbay Terminal, served by three electric railways carrying passengers into town from all over the East Bay and as far away as Chico! A double streetcar loop was built on First and Fremont Streets and both MSRy and Muni diverted much of their Market Street service to the new terminal, causing immense confusion and traffic jams the first few days. But the hope was relatively short-lived.
With almost all East Bay ferry service discontinued, many remaining ferry passengers opted for automobiles instead of the electric bridge trains. Most East Bay commuters who had started using their private automobiles across the bridge when it opened stayed in their cars. Within two years, only one company, the Key System, was still using the bridge railway, and Key’s revenues were declining. This in turn impacted streetcar ridership, to and from both East Bay Terminal and the Ferry Building, which along with lower Market Street declined into a seedy shadow of its past self.
Forced to revert to two-man streetcar crews in February, MSRy turned to buses, buying more than one hundred coaches in 1939-41 and largely converting several lines, including the 16-Third & Kearny and 19-Polk. The venerable Castro Cable and Fillmore Counterbalance lines were scrapped in 1941, both replaced by a new crosstown bus line, the 24-Divisadero.The Sacramento-Clay cable line would follow in January 1942, becoming the 55-Sacramento bus line (whose steep hills tormented motor coaches for decades until Muni electrified it and rerouted the 1-California trolley coach to run there).
Revenues held steady in 1939, but then dropped 5.5% in 1940. Wage gains by workers won through collective bargaining were one factor. As a regulated utility, MSRy couldn’t just raise fares at its discretion to offset increased costs such as this. Inevitably, more and more maintenance, of track, overhead, and the streetcars themselves, was deferred.
In 1941, revenues held steady and the operating loss was cut in half from the year before, to just over $100,000. Still, the company was teetering on the brink of insolvency.
War gave MSRy its final reprieve. Rubber and gasoline rationing forced drivers to leave their cars at home. Streetcar systems around the country, many of them sclerotic, were rejuvenated by riders. But with many maintenance people conscripted, properties continued to deteriorate, and MSRy was
no exception.
The top priority for both MSRy and Muni was finding operators for its vehicles. At both companies, the jobs of motorman and conductor had never been offered to women or African-Americans, and to hardly any other non-white males either. The wartime labor shortage forced a change. Muni had hired its first Black operator, Audley Cole, in 1940, but only because he had left the “race” checkbox blank. He had to fight aggressively to stay on the job after his own union refused to train him.
Market Street Railway was also reluctant to hire women and Blacks for platform positions, but had no choice if they wanted to make service. The wartime hire everyone remembers today was a 15-year old girl named Marguerite Johnson, who later wrote that she fibbed about her age and sat in MSRy’s headquarters at 58 Sutter Street every day for two weeks until she was hired in 1943. Her greater claim to fame, of course, came later as Maya Angelou.
Angelou’s early morning runs on the 7-Haight took her past a full city block of unused streetcars next to Golden Gate Park at Lincoln Way and 14th Avenue. This was known as the “boneyard,” comprised of both the one-man streetcars purchased less than a decade before and home-built cars made surplus by bus conversions. In coming elections, voters would be told that these cars would be put back into service to ease crowding if they approved the buy-out of MSRy, but that never happened.
It’s fair to say World War II postponed the inevitable for dozens of streetcar operations in the US, as people’s love of their automobiles was suspended for the duration. Market Street Railway saw its 1942 revenues jump a full 25 percent to almost $7.6 million, the highest level in ten years. 1943 saw revenues increase an additional 13% to $8.5 million, but expenses were rising even faster. No one really believed these ridership levels would last once the war ended and people could use their automobiles again. There had been a steady increase in the financial failure of private transit companies for years before the war. Those that continued to operate were hurt by regulators holding down fares. This was particularly true in San Francisco, where MSRy’s publicly-owned competitor, Muni, benefitted financially from City-generated electricity and government policies tilted in its favor.
But City leaders knew that they’d be held responsible if the transit service provided by the financially failing MSRy abruptly stopped, so they put another ballot measure to buy the company before voters in November 1942. It lost again, but this time it was close: less than 7,000 votes. Mayor Angelo Rossi announced he would put the identical question on the ballot again in a special election in April 1943. It lost yet again, and this time it wasn’t close, gaining just 38%.
Adding insult to injury, the State Railroad Commission stunningly decided to investigate the failing MSRy in 1943, diverting much-needed management attention from keeping San Franciscans moving. It then ordered MSRy fares be reduced from seven cents to six cents, which triggered an appeal by MSRy and an absurd state Supreme Court ruling forcing the company to issue one-cent refund coupons to every rider, redeemable if the fare cut was upheld. But since he now owned the company, Samuel Kahn had little choice but to persevere.
The torture ended after the election of a new mayor, shipping executive Roger Lapham, in November 1943. One of Lapham’s main campaign issues was consolidating MSRy and Muni, and then modernizing the combined operation. Lapham preached continuously on this in every corner of San Francisco, called a special election for May 16, 1944, and finally won voter approval to buy the assets of Market Street Railway Company for $7.5 million.
At 5:00am on September 29, 1944, Mayor Roger Lapham pulled a Market Street Railway streetcar out of Muni’s Geary Division carbarn, inaugurating the consolidated system. After a quarter-century, Market Street Railway’s transit operations ended.
Lapham followed through on his “modernization” promise with studies that initially recommended keeping up to fourteen streetcar lines, but the continuing requirement for two operators per streetcar (vs. one per bus) made it financially unfeasible, as Muni was still expected by City politicians to break even. Lapham then backed a successful 1947 bond issue that led to conversion of two dozen streetcar lines to buses, mostly zero-emission trolley coaches. Infamously, though, he also campaigned to replace the Powell Street cable lines, acquired as part of MSRy, with buses, a gambit blunted by the civic activism of Friedel Klussmann of Telegraph Hill, who earned the forever-sobriquet of “Cable Car Lady.”
Legacy
Even with the myriad changes to San Francisco since 1944, important parts of Market Street Railway’s legacy endure.
Its legacy endures on many Muni routes today, including the 22-Fillmore, 14-Mission, 7-Haight, 31-Balboa.
It endures in the network of parallel routes spaced a block apart in places, remnants of competition with Muni, a situation that has frustrated generations of Muni leaders trying to rationalize the system.
It endures in essential Muni facilities in MSRy locations, such as Cameron Beach Yard, home of the vintage streetcars, and Green Light Rail Division and shops on the site of the old Elkton Shops at
Balboa Park.
It endures in the memories of those still with us who rode its streetcars to elementary school or to swim at Sutro’s.
It endures in the Cable Car powerhouse and carbarn in Chinatown and the Powell-Mason line, (though this is ironic because owner Samuel Kahn wanted to convert the Powell cable lines too, but couldn’t afford the capital investment).
And, of course, Market Street Railway is still with us through our nonprofit, which took the name of its predecessor in 1976 to honor a feisty, fighting company that served San Franciscans faithfully through prosperity, Depression, and war.
As an independent nonprofit that gets no money from City government, we depend on fans of heritage transit and San Francisco history to keep us going. You can help here.
By Rick Laubscher, Market Street Railway President
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