American transit was privately owned then. Operators paid cities for the right to put tracks in streets. In San Francisco, the all–powerful Southern Pacific Railroad was behind a consolidation of street railways in 1893. Most urban transit fares in America were regulated, generally at a nickel, so minimizing costs was critical to earning profits. This led companies to embrace electric streetcars across the country, since their variable costs were half those of cable cars, and several times cheaper than horsecars.

San Francisco’s first streetcar line opened in 1892, near this museum on Steuart Street, running nine miles to Daly’s Hill (now Daly City), an unthinkable distance for a cable car. Soon several cable and horse lines around town were converted. By 1903, streetcars extended 20 miles south to San Mateo. But on Market Street, the backbone transit corridor, civic leaders opposed streetcars’ overhead electric wires. They wanted the more expensive underground power conduits installed in Washington and New York, but the powerful transit company, United Railroads, resisted.

The earthquake and fire of April 18, 1906 turned San Francisco transit, like the rest of the town, upside down. Many cable facilities were destroyed or damaged. United Railroads, seeing an opportunity, won the ‘temporary’ right to erect overhead wires on Market, made permanent through bribery. Streetcars on Market moved people faster and helped accelerate the city’s recovery. Despite the way it was done, the arrangement stood and the city’s transit was transformed.

But not without lasting consequences.