Market Street Railway President Rick Laubscher will present “How Transit Built San Francisco” at the Excelsior Branch of the San Francisco Public Library, 4400 Mission Street (between Ocean Avenue and Silver Avenue), Tuesday, July 29 at 7 p.m.
Rick will include slides that depict the development of transit in the city and how it shaped development of our neighborhoods over the decades. Some of the content is drawn from his new book, “On Track: A Field Guide to San Francisco Historic Streetcars and Cable Cars,” published by Heyday.
The talk is free. Autographed copies of the book will be available at the event. They’re also available at our San Francisco Railway Museum, or here in our online store.
A combination of events has left the F-line without streetcar service on one of the biggest visitor weekends of the year, July 25-26. You’ll only see buses on the F-line all weekend.
The historic streetcars’ overnight base was moved last month to Muni Metro East, just off Third Street and the T-line, to allow rails to be replaced near their long-time home at Cameron Beach Yard across town. This means that the historic streetcars now enter and leave F-line service via tracks along the southern Embarcadero. The last two blocks of these tracks, from Howard Street to the F-line tracks just south of Market, were built for the future E-line and had not been used in regular service. So, for several years now, they have been used by the [San Francisco Marathon](http://www.thesfmarathon.com) as a staging area.
It was too late to change that for this year’s Marathon, which starts Sunday morning, but Muni has told the Marathon organizers that they will have to find an alternative location by next year’s event, because the E-line is slated to be in regular weekend service by then.
Market Street Railway was not aware of this operating conflict until last week. We don’t know when Muni, the owner-operator of the F-line, first learned of it, but in any event, the Marathon had a firm contract in place and is an important part of the summer scene in the City. But the streetcars are too, so it’s unfortunate that this conflict is keeping the streetcars off the streets this weekend.
Months before either we or the Marathon organizers knew that the streetcars were to move their base, we got together at the Marathon’s initiative, and created mile markers for the runners that celebrate the historic streetcars, using the graphic images created by our ace designer David Dugan. So a touch of irony there.
The Marathon has also made a generous donation to Market Street Railway, for which we thank them. We and the Marathon organizers agree the streetcars themselves, not just images, should be on the street when the race runs in 2015 and beyond.
We’ve got a great combo opportunity coming up on Sunday, August 24. It’s a charter on PCC streetcar No. 1050 that starts at 1:00 p.m. at our San Francisco Railway Museum. We’ll cruise down The Embarcadero past AT&T Park, past all the new development on Third Street in Mission Bay and Dogpatch, then loop through Muni Metro East, the current home of the historic streetcar fleet and not usually open to the public.
Then we’ll head all the way back up the waterfront to Pier 39 and turn around, finishing at The Exploratorium at Pier 15. Your tour package includes VIP admission to one of the world’s great interactive science museums, which you can enjoy right up until closing time at 5 p.m. It’s a great afternoon out, enhanced by expert commentary along the route by our own Paul Lucas.
The package is $45 for Market Street Railway members, $55 for non-members. Under 18: $30. More information and sign up here.
