Rick Laubscher photo.
It was a great day on The Embarcadero Sunday, with 1914 Muni ‘Iron Monster’ No. 162 going into regular passenger service for the first time in 50 years. Fittingly for the ‘newest’ vintage streetcar, it ran in demonstration service on the ‘new’ E-Embarcadero line, operating flawlessly all day and drawing scads of riders and photographers. No. 162 was joined in the demonstration service by New Orleans ‘Desire’ No. 952 and double-end PCCs Nos. 1007 and 1015.
View photos from the E-line demo in the MSR Flickr group.
With four cars on the line and smooth reversing at the terminals, the demonstration service showed that the vintage cars can indeed co-exist smoothly with the Muni Metro LRVs of the N and T lines, with which they share the tracks south of Folsom. The demo service stirred up a lot of talk from South Beach neighbors at Market Street Railway’s ‘neighborhood fair’ booth south of Pier 40, with residents asking when the E-line would become a regular part of their neighborhood.
All in all, quite a success, we believe. Let us know about your own E-line experience in the comments below.
It was great. Packed but great. They should really start at least limited E-service with one or two streetcars.
I noticed that Muni was running shuttle buses on the F-line again yesterday. Was that to make up for the cars running on the E-line, or was it simply additional service for the Sunday Streets event?
@thamsenman
Glad to hear it. By the time I got down there, around 1:30 or so, it was thinning out, but everybody says it was quite busy throughout most of the day. And the South Beach block party got quite a turn out too… that neighborhood is really booming.
Shuttle buses on the F-line were extra service for Sunday Streets, not substitutes.
I wish this was up, I live in the Jackson Square and could use a convenient light rail access route to the South Beach neighborhood/Caltrain, other than the Central Subway which is scheduled to be operational in 2016.
What, you mean you don’t like the 10 bus? 🙂
I ride the 10 currently, but I’d prefer some more options in my area.
Actually, I was trying to be facetious…
Even if the Central Subway were a convenient way to travel between Jackson Square and South Beach, which it wouldn’t be, I wouldn’t bet too much on that 2016 opening date.
Perhaps thamsenman will enjoy the TEP-revamped 12 more than the 10 🙂
i got there about noon…had a chance to ride 952 and 162…162 was PACKED. It looked great!
@Eric,
Why wouldn’t it be?
The Chinatown station is going to be on Jackson and Stockton and I live on Montgomery between Jackson and Pacific.
Why isn’t that convenient? That’s 0.3 miles.
It would be a 5 minute walk or less.
thamsenman: Don’t forget the walk from 4th/King to wherever you’re going in South Beach. Not to mention inevitable delays that occur in 4th/King. Throw in the uphill walk to Chinatown station, and the trip could well be longer, and indisputably less convenient, than the direct bus route from Jackson Square to South Beach.
@Eric,
Isn’t the 10-Townsend poised for elimination as part of Muni’s TEP? I’m not sure I have much of a choice now but to advocate for both E and the Central Subway.
thasmenman: Service on Sansome and 2nd Street, connecting Jackson Square to South Beach, will be replaced by the new 12-Pacific route. Just because a route number disappears doesn’t mean that service on the relevant streets will disappear. Very often the question is one of reallocating service to connect different neighborhoods to each other. In the case of 10, the reallocations are to the new lines 12 and 47.