Free F-line Service This Weekend for Fleet Week

While National Park lands are a major destination of the planned streetcar extension to Fort Mason, connecting western Fisherman’s Wharf to regional transit and the rest of the waterfront is a big benefit as well. Market Street Railway illustration, Robert Campbell photo.

$2.50 for an F-line ride?

March 13, 2009August 9, 2014 Rick Laubscher News

Maybe. For the first time, Muni staff is officially raising the prospect of a different F‑line fare with its governing board.

The Ballad of an F-line Trip

January 21, 2009October 11, 2014 David Dugan Features

In 1901, the poet Gelett Burgess penned a poem that celebrated a cable car ride. Specifically, The Ballad of the Hyde Street Grip chronicled the feeling of riding what was then San Francisco’s newest cable car line, the O’Farrell, Jones & Hyde line, which had opened ten years before. The rule of that day was that any new cable car line was ‘inferior’ at the crossings to older lines, meaning that a gripman on the new line had to drop the cable at every crossing of an older line to keep the grip from slicing through the older line’s ‘superior’ cable, which crossed above the new line’s cable. Since the O’Farrell, Jones & Hyde line was the newest line of all, its gripmen had to drop the cable 22 times on every roundtrip, which is why Burgess wrote, “You are apt to earn your wages, on the Hyde Street Grip.”

End of the Line, 1955

November 21, 2008August 9, 2014 Rick Laubscher Features, Posts with Photos

We’re going to post photos from time to time that we think are iconic in one way or another. The Ocean Beach terminal of the N-line is an iconic place in general, at least to railfans, with that lonely loop and mission-style shelter hard by the sand dunes that form the last barrier to the Pacific (if you don’t count the public convenience station). (The city knew that most folks would reach the beach by streetcar back when Muni built its Sunset District lines, so there are matching bathrooms and tunnels under the Great Highway at Judah and Taraval.)

Philly’s Ghost Line

November 19, 2008August 9, 2014 Rick Laubscher News

If you build it, will they run? Not in Philadelphia, apparently. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports on 3,000 feet of brand new streetcar track and wires on a historic transit street, Germantown Avenue, that’s likely to just gather rust, despite the strong desire of neighbors for streetcars. What’s up? Well, the transit agency, SEPTA, which “temporarily” took trolleys off the street in 1992, says buses are better, never mind what residents think, never mind the $3 million in state funds to put down new tracks and wires at the residents’ request as part of a street overhaul. This is, as Yogi would say, “deja vu all over again.” SEPTA dragged its feet for years when residents on Girard Avenue demanded that the 15-line there be restored to PCCs. Editorial comment: all San Franciscans who complain about Muni, take a field trip and see SEPTA.