So we’ve been running a fun little contest on our Twitter account and our Facebook group. It’s an idea from our board member Chris Arvin to let people pick their “fan favorite streetcar” – however each person wants to define “favorite”. It was set up as an NCAA-style bracket, where you start with 32 teams, er, streetcars, and pit them against each other in pairs, where the one receiving the most votes in each matchup moves on to the next round, until you’re down to the Final Four, and then, the last two.
To see if there are differences between our audience on Twitter and that on Facebook, we’re actually running separate contests, using the same brackets. There were some differences in winners in the preliminary rounds between the two platforms’ audiences, but on both, the finals came down to the 1896 single-truck “Dinky”, the oldest passenger streetcar still operated by a North American transit agency, and the 1934 Blackpool, England “Boat Tram), whose open top and jaunty whistle has turned heads and generated smiles for decades in San Francisco.
The Twitter poll will close at Noon (Pacific Time) on Thursday, June 3, but we’ll keep our Facebook group poll open through the weekend to give people who haven’t participated in the contest yet a chance to vote in the finals.
We’ll share the final bracket results for both platforms here after all voting is finished.
We’ve heard from a few folks that it’s unfair that they should have to vote between two streetcars they love at any point in the contest, even more so as we’ve moved through the “Sweet Sixteen”, “Elite Eight”, and “Final Four”. It makes us happy to know so many people love so many different streetcars. And after all, it’s not like the streetcars get retired if they lose. There’s always another day.
In fact, we’re thinking of running a separate contest down the road just for the 32 PCCs, with all those colorful liveries. And maybe a separate one for just the older (pre-World War II) vintage cars. Stay tuned, and if you haven’t voted, please do!
I’d have to vote local, while still loving the boat car (2/3 or the entire fleet is now in the US). And having ridden both (is that a word? Does it matter?) I’d have to vote for the dinky as it’s like riding a cable car, in even more rigidly upright seats (with no more protection) at significantly higher speeds. Then again, a convertible improves any trip you have to take and who has to take any of these trips? Nothing mandatory about them. I guess, at the end of the day, you’re really voting for San Francisco and a quality of life nowhere else in America can compete with, and many can’t even imagine. And that’s a pretty sweet platform to vote for. “Open your Golden Gate, you know I can hardly wait!”. Yeah baby!
I’d like to be able to vote for both but have to go with Dinky. This like asking a parent which is their favorite child. So 1 vote for Dinky and close second for the boat.