Watch out for the wet
Streetcars and water don’t mix well. Electric motors don’t work when they’re soaked. Water coming down from the heavens – rain – no worries. But water coming up from beneath – flooded streets – not good.
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Happy 110th Birthday, Muni
December 28, 1912. Fifty thousand San Franciscans gathered at Market and Geary Streets. Was it a presidential visit? No, it was the transit equivalent of a late visit from Santa. It was a new streetcar line.
Looking back – and forward
In 2023, we will celebrate 150 years of cable cars AND the 40th anniversary of the first Historic Trolley Festival that led to the permanent F-Market & Wharves vintage streetcar line.
You need to be here!
On Black Friday, San Francisco felt, well, BACK! Our Board chair Carmen Clark and I attended the kickoff for Union Square’s “Winter Wanderland”, with a European-style holiday market in Hallidie Plaza featuring live entertainment, with Union Square itself brighter than ever with the big Macy’s tree, the ice rink, and entertainment. Folks were enjoying it, as were the many SFPD officers very evident this holiday season.
75th anniversary celebration of saving the cable cars proves a real bell-ringer
On October 26, San Francisco got a joyous reminder of just how important our cable cars are with a bell-ringing, bottle-breaking celebration of the 75th anniversary of the saving of the cable cars, in a grassroots campaign led by Friedel Klussmann, in an era when women had very little power in city political and economic life. (Here’s that fascinating story.)
1947: Cable car war
In 1947, San Francisco almost lost its Powell cable cars forever. A women-led campaign overcame male-dominated government and business interests to save them. That is a great story in itself. But there’s more to it, including lessons for today and tomorrow.
San Francisco’s Historic Streetcars
San Francisco’s transit system, known as Muni, owns and operates a unique collection of vintage streetcars along the City’s main thoroughfare, Market Street, and its northeastern waterfront. Streetcars, known in other places as trolleys or trams, are different than cable cars, but both are fun to ride. Learn about the differences here.
San Francisco’s World Famous Cable Cars
Cable cars were invented in San Francisco in 1873 by Andrew S. Hallidie. Today, only San Francisco has street-running cable cars like these. The system is a National Historic Landmark. Scroll down this page to see every one of the cable cars in today’s fleet. Click on any image to learn the story of that individual car.
STRIKE!
San Francisco has long been in the forefront of workers’ rights. This history extends back into the 19th century, but it was an event just one year after the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906 that shook the city all over again – one of San Francisco’s bitterest strikes that shaped the future of streetcar service in San Francisco and influenced the City’s labor movement in general.
Cable Car history
Cable cars were invented by Andrew Smith Hallidie, a Scots-born mining engineer. The story goes that he saw horses struggling to pull a railcar filled with passengers up one of San Francisco’s hills and decided to adapt his mining conveyor technology to pull rail cars, by means of an endless loop of cable under the street, between the tracks.
