Muni scholar’s tickets, about 1916. Market Street Railway Archives. Click to enlarge.

This weekend, Market Street Railway is joining the exhibitors at the Second Annual San Francisco History Expo. (Old Mint, Fifth and Mission Streets, 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, March 3-4, Admission FREE). Our exhibit this year celebrates Muni’s history as part of this, the centennial year of America’s first big city publicly owned transit system.
Our volunteers, led by Alison Cant, have dug into our archives for some cool history, including items that really resonate today.
Like “scholar’s tickets.” Right now, politicians are debating making Muni free for all youth (gee, seems like it already is, judging from all those kids going through the back doors, but that’s another topic).
Well, nothing’s new about students trying to save money on Muni. The scholar’s tickets came in booklets, offering a discount from the regular five cent fare. (When I was a kid, they used a card, good for ten rides for 50 cents — a 67% discount over the then 15-cent regular fare. The conductor or operator would punch out a space each time you rode.)

Muni conductor’s report, December 12, 1916. Market Street Railway Archives. Click to enlarge.

Back in 1916, though, the rules were clear, printed right on the cover of the scholar’s ticket booklet: you had to be under 18 AND in “actual and regular attendance in school” to qualify. As we see from the handwritten report from conductor A. J. Cadwallader on the H-Potrero streetcar at San Francisco General Hospital on December 12, 1916, two student nurses, at least 20 years old and from Stanford no less, were abusing the system!
Two days later, D. Collins, the assistant superintendent at 17th Street streetcar division (now Potrero trolley coach division), thought this petty larceny serious enough to write a letter to Tom Cashin, Muni’s first superintendent, asking for guidance, since some conductors were letting ’em ride anyway, while others were enforcing the rules. (Sound familiar?)

Letter to Muni Superintendent Thomas Cashin, December 14, 1916. Market Street Railway Archives. Click to enlarge.

Superintendent Cashin’s response, if any, is not in our archives, so we’ll never know how many pennies Muni lost to scurrilous students in its first decades of existence. But it won’t cost you even a nickel to see these pieces of history and more Muni artifacts at the Old Mint this weekend. C’mon down!

As our members and friends know, our organization is named for Muni’s old private competitor, Market Street Railway Company. That company actually went through several manifestations, starting back in the 19th century, when it was an arm of the Southern Pacific Railroad’s all-powerful “octopus,” famously novelized by Frank Norris.

In the 1920s, following a reorganization of United Railroads, the name appeared again, this time managed by a firm named Byllesby, which owned or managed numerous utility properties of many types around the country, not just streetcar lines.
Member Bob Davis recently sent us a reminder of Byllesby’s one-time reach with this photo of the restored downtown power station of San Diego Gas & Electric, with a medallion highlighting the Byllesby slogan, “Pioneers in Public Service.” What you don’t see, because the incised letters around the edge are painted the same color as the medallion itself, is the name “Byllesby” across the top and the words “Engineering-Finance-Management” around the edge.

On the similarly shaped original Market Street Railway logo (on which our non-profit’s logo is closely modeled), “Byllesby” appears in the same location along the top, and “Pioneers in Public Service” around the edge. When transit stopped being profitable in America (between the 1930s and late 1940s in most places), management companies like Byllesby gave up this part of their portfolio as public agencies took over. (Remember, Muni was the first big-city public transit agency when it started up in 1912; there were few like it around the country until after World War II.)
Now, though, we’re starting to see private-sector management of transit systems reappear in the U.S. and elsewhere, particularly with firms like Veolia, a French firm that now has contracts to run such systems as New Orleans’ RTA.
Thanks to Bob for the photo. By the way, in a little coincidence, San Diego’s weekend “Silver Line” loop, using an ex-Muni 1100-class PCC restored as a San Diego streetcar, runs right by this site today.