San Fran Tran (part 2)

by David Deutsch

As mentioned in part one, the Bay Area features four major kinds of transportation: BART, buses, trolley cars and cable cars. The BART is the area’s major subway system, spreading from the northernmost reaches of the area down to San Mateo, through San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley and numerous other cities. Buses, known as MUNI, cover the locations missed by BART. Trolleys and cable cars, also run by MUNI, deserve special mention because of their unique place in San Francisco’s history and culture ... and because they could provide a guidepost for Los Angeles’s transit future.

First, let’s look at the trolleys, also known as streetcars. These moving museums zip along the city’s waterfront district and bring people to Fisherman’s Wharf, Union Square, the Castro district, Chinatown, Nob Hill, Jackson Square, North Beach, Telegraph Hill, and Coit Tower. Streetcars ran just outside my hotel room, allowing me to use them often with my $20, 3-day all access pass (which did not include access to the BART trains.)

The streetcars are the original ones purchased in the 1930s, and it shows: the seats are small, cramped and uncomfortable. But lack of comfort made local travel more interesting than riding a conventional bus: the first time I stepped into a streetcar, I felt like I was entering a New Jersey diner, half-expecting to see tables with mini jukeboxes and friendly if blunt, big-haired waitresses. I was jolted out of my nostalgic fantasyland as soon as the car zipped away. The overhead electric antenna power thingies provided a beautiful blue spark at night, and the trains operated very quietly, without belching smog.

As cool as the trolley cars are, the cable cars are more so. They operate via an intricate network of cables, which runs underground and meets at a central location. This nexus also serves as the Cable Car Museum, where you can see the history of the cable cars and watch the cables operating the cars real-time. It’s a stop I’d strongly recommend, especially for my fellow nerdy types.

Although San Francisco is the only city in the world with a fully functioning cable car system, they were once popular throughout the country, and operated in many cities, including Los Angeles (more on this below). They played a very important and utilitarian role in San Francisco: before the system was installed, horse-drawn carriages would regularly flip over while attempting to climb the city’s steep hills.

The cable cars would not even exist today if not for a handful of determined San Francisco citizens who had the foresight to preserve them. In 1947, the city decided, on its own and without public debate, to shut them down. The public outcry was huge, and a woman named Friedel Klussman channeled the outrage into action by forming the Citizen’s Committee to Save the Cable Cars. After decades of fighting, the last cable car line was salvaged from the scrap heap. Thanks to Klussman and other dedicated citizens, the cable cars are the only transportation system listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Could L.A.’s mass transit renaissance begin with reintroducing these amazing transit options? In my opinion, abso-friggin-lutely. As I said earlier, Los Angeles once featured cable cars. Known as the Second Street Cable Railway, they began operation in 1885, from Second and Spring Streets to First Street and Belmont Avenue. L.A. also had streetcars, similar to those in San Francisco, until 1963. So to say mass transit is not built into our fair city’s DNA is not true; it’s more accurate to say transit was forcibly ripped out of our DNA and paved over to make way for our delightful roads and buses.

19th century Los Angeles cable car system

In a previous article I argued that economic incentives would increase mass transit usage more than any other factor. This is still true, but making a train ride fun and easy would also go a long way. While the realist in me understands how difficult, expensive and disruptive revitalizing our transit past would be, streetcars and/or cable cars could serve cultural as well as transportation functions. Not only would we improve transit and reduce traffic; we could also make mass transit a delight rather than a burden.

So what was did I learn from this trip? From a transit planning perspective, whether proud L.A. residents will admit to it or not, our neighbor to the north could provide us with a transportaion roadmap. Reviving our mass transit past would provide enormous free PR, thus bringing in more tourists, thus generating increased revenue and job opportunities, while offering locals a greater sense of pride and community identity. It would also alleviate our terrible traffic problems and provide increased mobility for the poor and marginalized.

It worked for San Francisco. Why couldn’t it work for us?

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