It’s starting already! Disruption of the F-Market & Wharves historic streetcar line for the Super Bowl celebration — a game still one month away!
In all the discussion about how Super Bowl City, an NFL concoction of sponsor-related activities, would force F-line streetcars off Market Street for up to three weeks starting later this month, nobody bothered to mention until the last minute that F-line streetcars will be replaced by buses from 9 p.m. this Friday, January 8, through the end of service Sunday, January 11. Here’s Muni’s official announcement, which says the streetcar shutdown is necessary so that cranes can take over Steuart Street to lift some sort of apparatus onto the roof of One Market for an NFL sponsor, Visa.
The entire F-line will be “bustituted” (buses substituted for streetcars) even the section from the Ferry to the Wharf. However, the E-Embarcadero weekend streetcar service will run as scheduled from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., so at least waterfront riders will have some streetcar service.
This could be considered the “pregame warmup” for the big Market Street F-line shutdown, which is likely to start on January 23 and last until February 11, almost three weeks, to allow for the construction, operation, and dismantling of Super Bowl City.
We will keep you up to date on any additional impacts of Super Bowl City on F-line service.
The Romans had “bread and circuses”. Today’s USA has “junk food and NFL football”. As a resident of the Los Angeles area, where the local sports scribes are having a field day covering the possible move of one or more pro football teams back to LaLaLand, I don’t “have a dog in this fight”, but just hope that The City is being well paid by the promoters of this disruptive event.