Muni launches its new 55-Sixteenth Street bus route today, running from the BART station at 16th and Mission to Mission Bay, serving the new Benioff UCSF Children’s Hospital and everything else in that fast growing neighborhood.
This means that 16th Street will host a double-double of Muni routes: The five-five and the two-two, much better known as the 22-Fillmore, one of the City’s most venerable transit lines.
Today is the beginning of a big transition for the 22, a very long crosstown line that starts at the Marina Green and makes a giant “L” through Pacific Heights, the Western Addition, Upper Market, the Mission, and Potrero Hill. Its traditional route (since the very beginnings) has taken it over Potrero Hill on 18th Street to reach Third Street, but once overhead wire is strung along 16th Street (which will somehow take three years, though it used to take three months or less when Muni had large overhead wire crews), the 55 will go away and be replaced by a rerouted 22-Fillmore trolley coach running all the way along 16th to Third. At that point, the trolley wires on Potrero Hill will be taken over by a rerouted 33-Stanyan — ANOTHER double number route, and, it should be noted, San Francisco’s very first trolley coach route, opened by our namesake, erstwhile Muni competitor Market Street Railway Company in 1935.
In celebration of today’s double play with the 55 and 22, we bring you a 1948 shot from our archives of two 22-Fillmore streetcars passing each other at 16th and Bryant, where both the 55 and 22 now run. Fitting for two reasons: Seals Stadium on the left, where myriad double plays were turned over the decades, and, just out of frame to the right, the Double Play bar, still there today!
The next issue of our Member newsletter, Inside Track, will have a special feature on the history of the 22-Fillmore, with photos you can’t see anywhere else. Join now, and we’ll also send you our feature on one of the world’s most unusual transit lines, the Fillmore Hill counterbalance (which was the northern extension of the 22-line until 1941).
