One important aspect of Market Street Railway is the preservation of important documents that illuminate San Francisco’s transit history.
Muni’s first schedule, from the Market Street Railway Archives. Gift of Galen Sarno. Click to enlarge.
The leader of our archival activity, Alison Cant, has sent along this wonderful document, bequeathed to us by the late Galen Sarno (a very generous supporter of our San Francisco Railway Museum, by the way). It’s Muni’s very first schedule, for inbound streetcars on the A-Geary, beginning December 28,1912. If you click to enlarge the photo, you’ll see that eight cars were scheduled (Muni only had ten on hand at the time). It took 28 minutes to go from Tenth Avenue and Fulton Street (Golden Gate Park) to Geary, then all the way downtown to Kearny and Market Streets. Today, the schedule for the 38-Geary is about the same to run from Park Presidio (near 14th Avenue) and Geary to the same point downtown, about the same distance.
The first car of the morning left Tenth and Fulton at 5:30 a.m. The last car of the evening left Kearny and Geary at 1:37 a.m., headed for the barn at Geary and Presidio Avenue (home to Muni trolley buses today).
The more things change…
I liked the timings to the nearest 30 seconds.
In the UK now, the national railway system says long distance trains are on time if they arrive within 10 minutes of their timetabled arrival time. Recently there is a proposal to measure arrival times to the actual minute!
I know I’m comparing apples and pears, but it appears that Muni had punctuality lessons for us more than 100 years ago!
Best Wishes to the Market Street Railway and its supporters!
New Orleans Public Service had half-minute designations on many of its bus and streetcar lines. Even the initial schedules RTA inherited from NOPSI in 1983 had them.