There will be no streetcar service on the F-Market & Wharves line all day Saturday, January 11. Sewer work is taking place on Market between Fremont and Third; crews are taking the opportunity to remove the disused track switch at First Street that used to connect to the now-demolished Transbay Terminal. Motor coaches will substitute for the streetcars, with Wharf-bound buses detouring via Second, Mission, and Fremont Streets to go around the work site.
(We don’t currently post comments to our entries because of a recurring flood of spam our software is unable to catch, but we’ll take a second to answer a comment a few were sure to make, along the lines that Muni should leave the switch in for future service. Any future streetcar track extension to serve the new Transbay Terminal (none is planned, by the way) would be better routed on a different street than First, which is the prime automobile connection between the Financial District and the Bay Bridge, and already backs up across Market on many afternoon peak periods. Removing and storing the switch, which was installed in the 1990s and still has decades of life remaining, reduces wear and tear on streetcar wheels, at least a tiny bit, as well as makes things smoother on Market for vehicles of all kinds.)
We were going to post something today urging people to take a vintage streetcar up to Castro on Saturday to see the marvelous Charlie Chaplin retrospective put on by the San Francisco Silent Film society at the Castro Theater. Now, you’ll have to take a bus or Muni Metro to get there, but it’s still well worth the trip. We salute our friends at the Society for their great work. Details here.
