KQED Radio’s program Forum dedicated an hour this morning discussing Muni safety following Monday’s historic streetcar crash and a major crash last month at West Portal Station which which injured 47 people.
Muni’s flagship streetcar, 1912 No. 1, has safely arrived at the shops of the contractor, Brookville Equipment Company in Pennsylvania (below), the first time in its 97-year life that the streetcar has left San Francisco. Reports we’ve received tell us restoration has already started.
So begins a story in this morning’s Wall Street Journal, accompanied by a picture of tourists riding a St. Charles line streetcar. Small irony here: New Orleans was one of the last privately owned big-city transit systems in the U.S., a subsidiary of an electric utility until the 1980s.
Should Muni’s vintage streetcars and iconic cable cars be open for sponsorship by corporations or other groups willing to pay for the privilege? One of the agency’s Board members has asked Executive Director Nat Ford to look into it, and he’s in the process of doing that now. Initial press coverage seemed skeptical, but Director Malcolm Heinicke says he’s just talking about discreet identification of a sponsor’s name on the vehicles.
Muni’s flagship streetcar, No. 1, made its last F-line run for awhile today, operating under its own power from Geneva Car House to Metro East at Illinois and Cesar Chavez Sts., where it is being stored under cover until vendor Brookville Equipment Company picks it up in a few weeks for transport to its shops in Pennsylvania for a complete rebuilding.
Rust and rot damage on streetcar no. 1
Our friends at Muni called the other day and asked if we would post the following announcement on our blog, as part of their effort to get the word out to the public on their budget problems and give people a chance to comment in various public forums. We’re happy to help; it’s printed unedited below. One note: it looks like Muni has pulled from consideration any possible separate fare increase for the vintage streetcars. (They had put a possible $1 surcharge for the F-line on a laundry list of potential revenue raising measures, but it appears to be gone now).
