“Autos, Transit, and the Sprawl of Los Angeles: The 1920s” by Martin Wachs highlighted how streetcars helped shape LA and how that region first pivoted from transit to the automobile. I’ve barely spent any time in LA but the article got me thinking about the interplay between transportation and urban form in another California city I know much better: San Francisco. I’ve spent my fair share of time getting around San Francisco on public transportation and it doesn’t take long to start to notice the quirks in the system, particularly in the light rail, Muni Metro. A quick read through the history section on Muni’s website reveals the reasons behind some of these quirks.
San Francisco is one of the few US cities that preserved part of its streetcar network, most famously a few of its cable car lines. Less well-known than the cable cars, but more important for the city’s transportation infrastructure, are five former streetcar routes that survived post World War II bus replacement and today make up five of the six Muni Metro lines: J-Church, K-Ingleside, L-Taraval, M-Oceanview, and N-Juddah. San Francisco and Los Angeles are often contrasted against each other in many ways, including in their preferred modes of transportation. The decision to preserve these five lines however, was not based in politics, culture or ideology, but rather geography. The K, L, and M all ran through the rail-only Twin Peaks Tunnel. The N similarly used the Sunset Tunnel and the J followed a narrow winding right-of-way through the hillside in Dolores Park before all five converged on Market Street in the city center. All of these routes would have required substantial infrastructure investments to accommodate buses, so streetcar service remained.
In the 1970s the four-track Market Street Subway opened with the lower level accommodating the new BART regional rail and the upper level available for Muni trains. By the early 80s the streetcars had been replaced with light rail trains that used the new subway and the five lines were collectively rebranded Muni Metro. Today Muni Metro remains a major part of the backbone of San Francisco’s transit infrastructure, and although generally regarded as a light rail system, it retains many quirks from its streetcar past. When running on the surface Muni trains are often in shared traffic alongside cars and feature a significant number of flag stops, where trains will stop only if passengers are waiting or have requested to disembark. Muni also lacks the traffic signal prioritization used to speed up many newer light rail systems. When compared with a newer system, such as the MAX here in Portland (which stops only at designated stations and runs in dedicated rights-of-way with traffic signal priority), traveling along Muni’s surface sections often feels slow and unpredictable. Still, these routes, shaped and preserved by the city’s geography and intersecting layers of infrastructure, have played an important role in building and retaining San Francisco’s urban form as we know it today.
Edited by Anthony Tortorici
Citations:
Wachs, M. (1984). Autos, transit, and the sprawl of Los Angeles: The 1920s. Journal of the American Planning Association, 50(3), 297-310.
Muni History. San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. https://www.sfmta.com/getting-around/muni/muni-history
Hi, Sam, thank you for your intriguing post! I did not know that a majority of the historic rail lines in San Francisco were preserved and are still operating regular services today (with new light-rail cars, of course). It is fascinating to learn how influential geography was to the preservation of these lines. It is also interesting to know that these services still operate like a streetcar/tram more than like a traditional light-rail service. I wonder whether the Muni Metro is more comparable to the Portland Streetcar than to the TriMet MAX lines (I would assume so). Judging by that map, it seems the Muni covers much more area and therefore offers much more service and access than the Portland Streetcar, which is basically a system of three lines: a North-South line and two other lines that are respectively clockwise and counter-clockwise loops. I also wonder if it is possible to add signal prioritization technology to the Muni, while still preserving its shared-traffic operations and discretionary stops. This would be a less costly investment than granting dedicated rights-of-way and designated stops, along with the signal prioritization.
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