Months of hard work by Market Street Railway and our allies has borne fruit. On March 2, San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced the F-line streetcars would return to service over the full length of their route, from Castro to Fisherman’s Wharf, in May. The Mayor also announced the resumption of cable car service on the Powell-Hyde line later this year, but definitely, she said, in time for the fall holiday season.
We have been coordinating with the Muni operators’ union, Local 250A, and with business and neighborhood groups along the entire length of the historic rail lines to advocate for their return after they were shut down a year ago, along with most other Muni service, by the Covid-19 pandemic. Our efforts were further spurred by reports that SFMTA leadership considered making vintage rail’s return contingent on winning voter approval of substantial new sources of revenue for SFMTA in the next regular election, not scheduled until June 2022. But several factors, including our work, hastened the city’s vintage rail comeback.
F-line details
Initial F-line streetcar service will run eight hours a day with the streamlined PCC cars only, because they are the quickest to install protective shields around the operator’s position, like the buses and light rail vehicles already have.
We have been working with union leader Roger Marenco and a committee of devoted F-line operators, plus Muni’s PCC maintenance team, led by Kevin Sheridan, to create functional barriers that do not distract from the historic look of the PCC interiors. A prototype has been installed on PCC 1060, and all 32 PCCs are scheduled to get them, with enough cars done by May to enable the restart.
After the PCCs are done, we will push to have improved operator protection implemented on the Milan trams and the one-of-a-kind vintage streetcars, although as the pandemic wanes, protective shields or barriers may not be necessary at that point.
For further operator safety when the F-line starts back up, the same operator will keep the car all day, taking it out of the barn and bringing it back at the end of the shift, as is currently being done with buses and light rail vehicles.
This will initially limit F-line operation to around nine hours a day, with exact starting and ending hours to be determined in consultation with merchant groups along the line. (Pre-pandemic, the F-line operated 18 hours a day. Most F-line cars stayed on the route the whole time, with one operator relieving another in the middle of the day.) The service frequency (time between cars) will be greater than the approximately six-eight minutes pre-pandemic. Ten to twelve minutes between F-line cars is probably where the service will start out. Growing demand could change that.
E-line service south of the Ferry Building along the Embarcadero and King Street to the Caltrain commuter rail depot will not resume at this time. Caltrain ridership has plummeted and the station and southern Embarcadero are already served by the T-Third light rail line and soon by a resumption of N-Judah rail service as well. It is possible that a truncated version of the E-line, north of the Ferry, could resume service later this year, about which more here.
Cable car comeback
“Cable cars are a part of the fabric of San Francisco,” Mayor London Breed said March 2 in a tweet. “They draw tourists, they help our economy, and I’m not going to let them just disappear.”
Only the Powell-Hyde cable line is slated for reinstatement at this point. Inside Track has learned that the target date to resume service is Labor Day (around September 6). Cable car experts we’ve talked to say service theoretically could resume far sooner if the health situation permits, except Muni is looking at a lengthy schedule for testing the machinery and cable; significantly longer than really needed, according to these experts.
But health considerations do have to be paramount. While some have suggested the cable cars are inherently safe to ride because they’re “outdoors”, remember that half of a Powell car’s capacity is in a closed section with windows that don’t open. In the open sections, all passengers sit or stand within six feet of the gripman. Social distancing would have to be relaxed and gripmen and conductors would have to be vaccinated to really reduce risks at present infection levels, even with masks. By the fall, there’s a good chance things will have improved to allow safe operation of the cable cars with a substantial number of riders.
That said, when it’s safe to open one cable line, it’s safe to open them all. SFMTA/Muni hasn’t offered an explanation as to why only the Hyde line will open then, but operating cost has to be a factor. In a revealing look at
SFMTA’s perilous long-term budget situation, journalist Joe Eskenazi cites operating statistics SFMTA submitted to the Federal Transit Agency showing that operating costs attributed to the cable cars rose 35.5% between 2013 and 2019, while cable car fare revenues fell 8.3% in the same six-year period. The data show that the annual operating deficit of the cable car operation grew 81.6% between 2013 and 2019, from $25.2 million to $45.8 million in 2019, despite a premium fare on the cable cars ($7 most of that period, $8 now, with no discounts for kids and no transfers).
It should be noted that Muni’s total fare revenues declined 10.6% in that six-year period, a higher percentage than the cable car revenue decline. Still, that 81.6% runup in cable car costs over a period when service levels did not increase at all bears investigation, and that’s exactly what we plan to do and report back to you in our next issue. (To read Eskenazi’s full report, which shows what a tough financial road Muni has ahead, click here.)
Cable cars enjoy unique protection in San Francisco’s City Charter, which requires that cable cars be operated at their pre-pandemic level of service. Passed by voters in 1971 when service cutbacks were threatened, it would take another ballot measure approved by voters to modify that charter amendment. When the current state of emergency is lifted (no schedule for that yet), Muni would be obligated under the Charter to restore service to pre-pandemic levels, or potentially face lawsuits. It remains to be seen what happens next with the cable cars.
Time to celebrate
Market Street Railway is already thinking about celebrating the return of the historic streetcars and cable cars with special opportunities for our members. We are already thinking about whether a scaled-down Heritage Weekend could be mounted, and we’ll do all we can to get a special tour and trip this fall to our members. We will also be looking for ongoing opportunities to celebrate the F-line cars regularly once they’re back.
More on all of this in our next issue and in our monthly electronic newsletter. In the meantime, we would like to thank Local 250A President Roger Marenco, and F-line operators including Aleena Galloway, David Gunter, Eric Lawson, Forrest Hereford, Jackie Robinson, Juel Rice, Julius Howard, Mike Delia, and Ryan Lee for their support on the PCC operator shield design, and SFMTA Chief Mechanical Officer Doug Lee, his right-hand Louis Guzzo, and Kevin Sheridan and the crew at Cameron Beach Yard for what we are sure will be a quick and effective installation, so that Muni can safely resume F-line service.
The San Francisco Examiner asked MSR President Rick Laubscher for comment on Mayor Breed’s announcement, which follows: “We thank Mayor Breed and SFMTA leadership for finding a way to return these symbols of our city to the street during these challenging budget times. They’ll send a sign to the Bay Area, California, and the world that San Francisco is back in business.”
As we rightfully celebrate the good news, we shift our focus to near-term challenges to streetcar and cable car operation, which we discuss here.
