If not for the broken Bay Bridge, it would have been the biggest transportation story of the day: the reaction to Mayor Newsom’s musings about eventually removing all Muni service, including the F-line, from Market Street. The chatter started in Blogsville the moment the Mayor appeared looking pensive on the front page of the Examiner yesterday.
Streetsblog reckoned that Newsom is probably not serious, and then tried to nudge him away from the thought by quoting a variety of transportation “hitters” as saying 1) it won’t work and 2) he doesn’t really mean it.
Curbed SF covered it too, in generally the same way, even using one of Todd Lappin’s great photos (which is featured in our 2010 calendar) to illustrate the piece.

But what we like the best is the comments on these and other blogs, including our own. Not much love given to Muni’s bus lines, but some fierce defense of the F-line streetcars.

• “How tone
  deaf to the aesthetics of cities can people be? The street car line is
  the only good thing to happen to Market street in the many decades of
  taking millions upon millions of Federal highway funds…”
• “Banning the historical streetcars on Market would be a political
  nonstarter. If it does go through, I want to take a match to Gavin’s
  flammable hair.”
• “Enough already, Gavin! This is just ridiculous — the F Line is about
  the only thing left that still gives Market some cosmopolitan
  character, and the city spent tons of money to put it in. And it stops
  for red lights, unlike most bicyclists.”
• “I can understand the removal of cars and diverting some of MUNI’s bus
  service, but the removal of the “F” line is idiotic. I’ve seen
  streetcars in major arteries (without cars) work very successfully.”
• “I don’t
  understand how people like me (too old with ancient knee injury) are
  supposed to get downtown to support local merchants if you take away
  the streetcars.”
• “Bad idea. *Maybe* ban buses on Market, but definitely not the street cars. Instead, can we ban half-naked bums who poop on the sidewalk? Now that would be progress for Market Street!”
• “I”d love to get buses off of Market Street. let’s build a few more streetcar lines..”
• “IMHO, the historic streetcars are one of the best thing to have happened to Market Street in years.”

• “This is
  the first time that I have seen near consensus in a comments field on
  this blog! If that’s not an indictment of this idea I don’t know what
  one is!”

Don’t be surprised if you don’t hear any more about this idea from City Hall.

This morning’s Examiner has a startling story: Mayor Gavin Newsom is dreaming about going way beyond the current test auto restrictions on Market Street, and move all vehicles, including Muni buses and F-line streetcars off the street.
The article says Newsom is raising the possibility of rerouting “Muni to Mission Street or another nearby street so that Market Street could be transformed into a place solely for cyclists and pedestrians, and include such amenities as tables and chairs in the
center of the thoroughfare.”

The article says Newsom acknowledged the idea is a long way from reality.  “That’s not being contemplated in the immediate term, but data
collection will afford us the opportunity to determine if that’s a
viable option,” he told the Examiner.
Several community leaders are quoted in the article as expressing skepticism of the plan. A similar plan put forward almost 40 years ago to try to turn back or reroute Muni lines off Market fell of its own weight.
Beyond the cost of moving the F-line tracks and overhead anywhere else, the lack of capacity for 12 additional Muni lines on Mission Street, or the reaction of Market Street/Union Square merchants and SOMA neighbors to the impacts, there’s the obvious inconvenience to tens of thousands of daily Muni riders on the surface of Market Street who won’t want to be forced to transfer onto overcrowded Muni Metro trains or make their surface journey even longer with a permanent detour in the wrong direction.  So our guess here is that either the Mayor was just musing about Nirvana or was somehow misunderstood by the reporter.
As we’ve advocated for years, less automobile traffic on downtown Market Street is a plus.  We’ve noticed during the current test that there’s still too many cars holding up Muni vehicles eastbound between Third and First, and we’d support testing additional restrictions (something Newsom also mentions in the article).  The great photo taken by Todd Lappin in this post shows what can Market Street can feel like when automobiles don’t dominate. Yet there are practical limits, so we won’t be planning to enjoy croissants and a latte at a cafe table stylishly located atop the BART ventilator in the middle of a Muni-free Market Street. 
But you bet we’re keeping an eye on this.