All Muni vehicles are being evicted from the downtown portion of Market Street for two weeks starting October 14, so that the Department of Public Works can install conduits for new traffic signals on a three block stretch between Fifth and Eighth Streets. This is the first phase of the tortured “Better Market Street” project, stripped way down from the bloated, unaffordable scope that SFMTA Chief Jeff Tumlin blew the whistle on when he took over in 2019.
The 6-Haight-Parnassus trolley coach line returned to service July 9, 2022, after being shut down since the start of the Covid pandemic in Spring 2020. We recounted the history of this line in our exclusive member magazine, Inside Track, in 2019. We hope readers who enjoy this story will join us or donate, so we can keep telling stories like this.
We have received this notice from Muni: “The SFMTA, in partnership with the Department of Public Works, will be substituting motorized buses for the full F Market & Wharves historic streetcar route for three weeks, starting Feb. 22 through March 12. During this time, F Line service will be modified to accommodate construction activities for the Upper Market Safety Project as well as other essential track repair and maintenance elsewhere on the rail corridor.”
This magnet represents Muni’s small fleet of Fageol Twin Coach dual-engine gasoline buses. Magnet measures 4.75″ long. Learn more about it here. Read More……
This coach has great historic value – for what it didn’t do. It’s the only survivor of ten delivered to Muni in January 1947 for the express purpose of replacing the Powell Street cable cars. And it didn’t. And San Francisco is better because of it.
At its December 7 meeting, the SFMTA Board of Directors unanimously passed a resolution directing Muni management to evaluate using PCC streetcars to provide single-ride service long-term on the J-Church line. The action was part of a broader measure that instructs management to return J-line light rail vehicles to the Muni Metro Subway as soon as possible.
Cable cars aren’t the only San Francisco transit vehicles that “climb halfway to the stars.” This 1938 White Motor Company bus spent parts of four decades growling up and down Telegraph Hill on Muni’s 39-Coit line. White had built Muni’s very first bus in 1918, and was Muni’s favored source for its then-infrequent bus purchases. Bus #042 was one of 22 Model White 784 buses delivered to Muni in 1938-39, at a cost of $10,477.53 each (including farebox).
More than ten years ago, the City proposed a modest project to repave downtown Market Street. Planners got involved; advocacy groups pushed to add more features; city departments weighed in with wish lists, all saying, “If you’re going to that that, you should also do THIS.” The project metastasized into a full rebuilding of everything on and under the street from curb to curb, from the foot of Market to Octavia Street, more than two miles.
F-line streetcars will operate almost twice as long every day, from 7 a.m. – 10 p.m., starting Saturday, June 26.
There would be no F-line today without the concerted effort of a group of advocates and enablers in the early 1980s. Many of them were openly gay. No better time to celebrate their achievements than Pride Month.
