By Rick Laubscher, Market Street Railway President
On September 1, 1995, vintage streetcar service on the permanent F-Market line was inaugurated with a parade led by the Blackpool boat car and a vintage automobile carrying Mayor Frank Jordan.
There was no parade to celebrate the F-line’s 25th anniversary this year. In fact, there is no clear indication of when vintage streetcars will again carry passengers on the streets of San Francisco.
Turning the F-line from a dream into a reality in the first place took some fifteen years, from Muni’s first official inclusion of it in their planning, to the successful Historic Trolley Festivals of the 1980s, to persistent advocacy for funding, to vehicle acquisition and infrastructure construction. Market Street Railway’s leaders were in the thick of all of it, pushing it forward. We’ve recounted that in these pages before and online (see streetcar.org/brief-history). There’s also a new and detailed history of how the F-line came to be by this author in the September issue of Railfan & Railroad magazine, available for purchase at railfan.com.
But what now? What about the next 25 years for vintage streetcars in San Francisco? We have to start with the immediate future first.
Harsh reality
Muni’s historic streetcars have been out of service since April, when all rail service was shut down, including the six Muni Metro lines and the cable cars. Market Street Railway’s top advocacy priority is getting the historic streetcars and cable cars back in service as soon as it’s safe for crews and riders. The suspension of rail service was part of radical surgery on the Muni network carried out by SFMTA’s top executive, Director of Transportation Jeffrey Tumlin, and SFMTA Director of Transit (head of Muni) Julie Kirschbaum.
As a regionwide Covid-19 lockdown decimated ridership, Muni shrank its 80-line system down to just seventeen core lines on April 8, all operated by buses, to serve only essential workers. Many SFMTA employees were redeployed to tasks such as cleaning the buses that remained in service or serving as “ambassadors” at transfer points to help riders navigate the skeletal system. No one was laid off.
As the initial shelter-in-place order eased in the Bay Area, Muni added back lines selectively, some partially. The biggest addition came on August 22, when LRV service in the Market Street Subway resumed with just three lines: the N-Judah, a through-routed M-Ocean View/T-Third line, and a high-capacity S-Shuttle line going back and forth completely underground between Embarcadero Station and West Portal station. The K and L lines were combined as an all-surface route, with downtown passengers forced to transfer at West Portal. The J-Church line became surface only, with passengers dropped off at Market and Church to transfer to the subway. (Full up-to-date information on Muni service changes is always available at sfmta.com. Click on “news” at the top.)
But three days later, failing overhead splices in the Market Street Subway shut down all LRV service again. Muni has now said they will replace all the splices in the subway wire with new ones, and don’t expect to resume LRV service at least until the end of 2020. Buses went back out to replace the LRVs, leaving fewer buses on the newly restored routes, which has led to complaints by riders of unsafe overcrowding on those buses.
And even with the latest bus route restorations on August 22, Muni is still operating just 58% of its pre-Covid routes, and some of those have been modified. In its announcement of these reopened routes, Muni says “our service allocation throughout the city beyond August is uncertain. The routes that are not being prioritized to bring back into service in the near term consist of routes that:
• Provide parallel, duplicative, service to our existing network.
• Connector, historic and specialized routes, that are important and beloved, but provide shorter service to a smaller number of people.
Misrepresenting the F-line
Without specifically naming them, they clearly include the vintage streetcars and cable cars in that last bullet. But based on Muni’s own statistics, it is simply not true that the historic streetcars and cable cars “provide shorter service to a smaller number of people”. MSR board member Chris Arvin obtained release of Muni’s own public (but not readily available) operating data for pre-Covid months. Those Muni data show 20,000 daily F-line boardings, putting the F-line in Muni’s top fifteen (of 83) pre-Covid routes for daily ridership. (The F-line, at six miles in length, is also one of Muni’s ten longest lines.) Yet, after the changes of August 22, the F-line is now the highest-ridership Muni line by far that has NOT had service restored. (The F has almost twice the daily ridership of the next-busiest line not yet restored, 47-Van Ness.)
Dispelling another common misconception about the F-line, Muni’s own ridership data show that fully 79% of F-line riders are residents (consider all the Castro/ Upper Market/ Downtown riders and Wharf area workers) and that 75% of them have annual incomes of less than $75,000.
So, Muni’s own data show that the historic streetcars are far from a tourist toy. They are a viable transit service that actually attracts riders while providing needed mobility between popular destinations, especially along the Embarcadero between the Ferry Building and the Wharf, which remains without any Muni service at all.
Saying the right things, but…
At the outset of the rail cutbacks, we started advocating for the earliest safe return of historic streetcar service, safe being the operative word. Muni’s buses already have partial protective shields between operators and riders. So do all Muni’s LRVs, and the seven double-end PCCs in the vintage fleet as well (needed to keep riders out of the empty cab at the back of the car). MSR Board Chair Carmen Clark and I met with Tumlin and Kirschbaum by video on July 17 to make a specific request that protective barriers be installed right away in the single-end PCCs as well. We followed up with a virtual meeting with Kirschbaum on September 16.
Near the beginning of our July meeting, Tumlin stated, “The F-line and cable cars are essential to the future of San Francisco. We are very eager to bring the F-line back.” And yet, the two leaders have yet to offer a time frame for when that might happen. As for the barriers, Kirschbaum told us in July that they were adding extra barrier protection to the buses first, a job she now says will stretch well into November. At that point, she says, they will start on the PCCs so that they would be ready for a return to service.
Kirschbaum specifically stated there are no plans at this time to fit barriers on the Milan trams or the individual unique vintage cars, nor, as mentioned, would she commit to a date to restart streetcar service. But in literally her next sentence, she stated, “that is not at all an indication of Jeff’s and my long-term commitment to the historic fleet.”
We found that confusing and said so. Subsequent to that meeting, we learned that the Operators’ Union, Local 250A, wants the streetcars back on the street, with protection, soon as well. We’re told there are many qualified streetcar operators who would much rather operate them than buses. There is a natural starting point: the original F-Market of 25 years ago, from Castro to lower Market Street. Right now, Muni is operating K, L, and T line buses on the surface of Market Street, with the T-bus using the F-line terminal at 17th and Castro to start its ten-mile trip to Visitacion Valley. A retired Muni scheduling expert at Church and Market saw K, L, and T buses bunched like carrots in mid-September, followed by a 37-Corbett bus, which Muni has inexplicably extended from its regular route through the hills to run all the way to Van Ness. This expert pointed out to us that putting F-line streetcars back would enable the 37 to revert to its old route (terminating at Church) and the T to terminate at the Ferry, while still having the same coverage on Market. This is important because Muni has said it’s short of buses with the subway out again. This is an option we have started to advocate.
Included in that advocacy will be providing the barriers in other streetcars after the PCCs are finished. (The seven double-end PCC cars (Cars 1006-1011 & 1015) already have such barriers.) The Milan trams in the fleet arrived in San Francisco in the late 1990s with such operator barriers installed. Muni removed them. Some of the hardware remains in place though, and Milan itself has subsequently upgraded the operator protections on its Peter Witt trams, providing a ready model. Additionally, a few of the vintage streetcars, such as “EuroPCC” 737 and the two Melbourne W-class trams, have enclosed operator cabins already. And the barriers to be installed in New Orleans’ streetcars, both historic and replica, are of a design that would seemingly work on the original Muni streetcars in the historic fleet (Cars 1, 130 & 162).
Bigger than the barrier installation issue is the critical question of where the vintage streetcars actually fit into Muni’s future priorities. We are hearing rumblings that the reason behind the failure to pledge the F-line’s early return could be a push to find new revenues for Muni, which Tumlin has said will “fall off a fiscal cliff” by 2022. It may be that they will try to make the F-line’s return dependent on voters approving new taxes, or something similar. We hope not, and would fight that.
Our advocacy has been successful through the decades because we focus on making a positive difference for the neighborhoods the streetcars serve and for the overall economy of the city. As Muni’s own data show, the vintage streetcars are heavily ridden by locals. They have clearly proved their worth as both attractive transit and a stimulus to development through the tenure of eight mayors and dozens of supervisors and members of Muni’s governing boards. In his meeting with us, Tumlin volunteered that he sees his role more expansively than his predecessors have. “I understand that I’m responsible for the economic health of San Francisco,” he told us.
Cable cars
Everyone knows how much the cable cars contribute to the city’s visitor industry. But the mobility required of conductors and the proximity of gripmen/women to passengers make isolation by barriers impossible, leading Tumlin to state publicly they’ll likely remain on the sidelines “until there’s a vaccine”.
Remember, though, that the cable cars normally carry about 20,000 riders a day between the Wharf and Union Square. Right now, the relatively small number of visitors are getting around without either the cable cars or streetcars, though they miss them both. But tourism will pick back up as people feel more comfortable traveling, and if the cable cars stay out for an extended period, the return of the F-line is even more important as a lifeline for the city’s economy.
Going forward
The economy San Francisco has enjoyed for the past 25 years isn’t necessarily the one it will have for the next 25, so we don’t assume everything will go back to just the way it was. Our advocacy priorities have changed in the past as the city’s economy and transit needs have changed, and that will continue. Already, there are a few early hints of that future San Francisco that we’re keeping an eye on.
Positive signs on Market
Construction is continuing on major new residential projects in the mid-Market neighborhood between Fifth and Eighth Streets, an area that has had its challenges with revitalization. These will bring thousands of new residents to the F-line route. Additionally, the just-released news that the first downtown IKEA superstore in America will fill a completed but vacant “vertical mall” building on Market between Fifth and Sixth represents another vote of confidence in the future of Market Street. There’s no question that retail stores in every big city have been impacted by online shopping the past several years, a trend greatly accelerated by the change of habits imposed by Covid-19 restrictions. So, we see IKEA’s arrival as a positive sign.
The best chance for downtown retail districts to recover around the country is the presence of additional attractions to draw shoppers and visitors. Fortunately, the mid-Market area has both the Powell Street cable car lines and the historic streetcars of the F-line providing connecting transportation to other attractions that stimulate visits, including Fisherman’s Wharf, the Alcatraz and Bay cruise boats, the Ferry Building Marketplace, and Union Square, which has the potential to mount more events when Covid-19 restrictions end. (Disclosure: the author currently serves as Chair of the Union Square Foundation board of directors.)
The development trends in the mid-Market area make the project to add a track loop at McAllisterand Market an even wiser investment, as it will allow Muni to readily adjust F-line service to meet demand both on the full-time route to Castro, and at peak visitor times, along the busiest part of the route. Kirschbaum reiterated to us on September 16 that they’re trying to get this built as quickly as possible.
On the waterfront
During the pandemic, we’ve seen a growing desire for outdoor recreation among San Franciscans. As we return to whatever passes for normal in the future, it is likely demand for waterfront recreation will continue to grow. That’s an important component of big plans just submitted by a major developer for a dynamic mix of residences, offices, and on-water recreation at the vacant Piers 30-32 on the E-line just south of the Bay Bridge and the large parcel of land across the Embarcadero. The developer’s confidence that the waterfront will resume its vibrant growth (stimulated in part by the attractive streetcar and light rail service) is a positive sign to us.
West of the current E- and F-line terminal in central Fisherman’s Wharf, an influential group of San Franciscans continues to push for the restoration or replacement of Municipal Pier, which sits on federal parkland at the foot of Van Ness, and the upgrade of the surrounding Aquatic Park. This project is strongly supported by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who are well positioned to round up federal money if there is a change of administration next year. We are continuing to advocate for the extension of historic streetcar service along Beach Street to bring people to the revitalized park and pier and ultimately to Fort Mason beyond. Increasing the attractive recreational space along our waterfront will make the city that much more alluring to visitors. We will work to get federal funding for this.
South of the current E-line Caltrain terminal, in Mission Bay and Dogpatch, we believe the transformation that is already underway will continue. As our members know, for more than a decade we have advocated extension of the E-Embarcadero line down the T-line tracks through that area. Muni leaders have strongly opposed our idea, fearing interference with the T-Third light rail line (although all the F and E line pull-outs and pull-ins in the years the historic fleet was based at Muni Metro East didn’t cause any T-line problems).
With so much uncertainty about the quality of Muni’s subway operations, we had already deferred this piece of our advocacy until the T-line moves into the new Central Subway under Fourth and Stockton Streets. That facility has been delayed over and over and is currently targeted to open at the end of 2021. The combination of good weather and proximity to downtown and the Bay will continue to attract residential developers as new recreational venues such as Crane Cove Park (at the new streetcar loop at Illinois and 19th Streets) and the public shores at the Giants’ Mission Rock development and the Pier 70 and Potrero Power Station developments come on line. We believe the time will come when extra transit capacity along the extended waterfront will be both needed and desired, in the form of vintage streetcars on the E-line linking all the waterfront recreational opportunities. The timing? Not soon perhaps, but not never either.
Enabling the city’s comeback
Some have taken a pessimistic view of San Francisco’s future, predicting major migration of tech workers to cheaper cities where they can work from home full-time. And some of that has already happened. But San Francisco has seen these waves of in- and out-migration before, most recently after the “dot-com bust” around 2000. As happened then and in previous economic cycles, the attractiveness of the city itself, coupled with cheaper rents for both office and residential space (residential rents are down well over 10% this year) will bring in new residents over time. There is great potential for attracting companies in growth industries such as biotechnology and climate change defense.
No question there will be changes in San Francisco travel patterns that will endure for an unknown period of time. It’s hard to predict when downtown office towers will attract new tenants, or just who those tenants will be. Some could be converted to residential use, as our Advisory Board member Oz Erickson did with the old AAA office building on Van Ness near City Hall. It is likely that many office workers who stay in the Bay Area will work from home part-time, which will relieve pressure on previously crowded transit systems, including BART, Muni, and Caltrain. But the continuing addition of residential units where streetcar tracks already run is a positive sign for the E- and F-lines in years to come.
As for visitors, it’s unclear how long it will take for that lifeblood of San Francisco’s economy to fully rebound. It depends heavily on when visitors from overseas and across the country feel comfortable on long airplane flights to SFO. And economic problems may keep some from coming even then. We just can’t be sure.
What we do know is that the “steel triangle” of historic streetcars and cable cars connect areas that have been the heart of retail and visitor activity in San Francisco for at least 75 years. Those areas represent billions of dollars of private investment, and the vintage transit lines represent unique and irreplaceable infrastructure. Adapting a phrase from the movie “Field of Dreams”, We built it. They will come. Again.
Historic future
The spectacular restoration of Pier 70 between the Warriors’ shiny new Chase Center and Metro East off Third Street is a glimpse of San Francisco’s future. A shipyard dating back to Gold Rush Days, hundreds of vessels were built here, including many Navy battleships and submarines around the turn of the 20th century. Dozens of Muni’s original streetcars were built here, too. Tens of thousands of solid blue-collar jobs were created here, only to wane in the face of international competition and antipathy toward industrial installations in San Francisco. At one point in the 1980s, a disused part of Pier 70 served as a storage area for Muni’s retired PCC fleet. Now, that building in the photo background is being restored as a multi-use facility, literally being jacked up ten feet higher in anticipation of rising seas.
Just to the south of Pier 70, the old Potrero Power Plant site is being converted into housing as well. To the north, the Giants have begun construction of their Mission Rock development, virtually a new neighborhood just across McCovey Cove from their ballpark. These three developments alone will add 7,000 residential units over the next ten years, and are already spawning more project proposals around them. In time, Mission Bay and Dogpatch will need more attractive transit.
