SF Throwbacks
Why SF cable cars are so iconic: A history
One of San Francisco’s most popular tourist attractions is also one of the world’s last manually operated cable car systems.
This article is part of SF Throwbacks, a feature series that tells historic stories of San Francisco to teach us all more about our city’s past.
By Davy Carren
Well before the bell-dings of Rice-A-Roni ads brought long lines of tourists, cable cars were a mainstay of San Francisco transportation.
In fact, cable cars reigned. At twice the speed of horse-pulled carriages, these boxy rattlers could climb the city’s steepest hills when horses wouldn’t dare.
Today, cable cars make for quaint selfies on our Instagram grid, but they were a real game changer 150 years ago.
How it began
Andrew Smith Hallidie — then a mining engineer — put all the horses out of business on Clay Street, converting his aerial tramway into sleek rails that transported people instead of iron and ore. It was all a little lucky:
His gripman quit on the spot when he stared down the harrowing incline. Hallidie jumped in, taking the controls of the leading dummy car, and set off down by himself, smoothly maneuvering the enclosed trailer behind him to safety at the hill’s bottom.
And so began the indomitable age of cable car dominance. While similar systems sprung up soon after in the 1800s, San Francisco’s remains today as one of the world’s last manually operated cable car systems.
Our transit scene was transformed by these standard-gauge open-sided cars as commuters sat, stood, and hung from the sides while they trundled happily throughout the city at a steady 9 miles per hour — running as far west as 12th avenue, while also winding into the Presidio, through Castro’s hilly terrain and into Noe Valley, and even to Bernal Heights.
With 23 lines (all established from 1873 to 1890) doing the former job of horses, the cars would shuttle folks up and over the hills and down Market Street to the Ferry Building.
But all empires (even ones built on underground pulleys, channels, sheaves and bumper bars) crumble, eventually.
“Junk the cable cars!”
Cable car lines enjoyed an undisturbed roaring capitalism for about 40 years. Eight different companies controlled the market since the streetcar’s birth in 1872, with five competitors on Market street alone. But that all changed in 1912.
San Francisco’s newly-launched SFMTA started buying up these businesses and replacing their equipment with speedier streetcars. This move eventually sent well-known names like Cal Cable and Market Street Railway into the sunset of our collective conversation.
And cable cars might have vanished entirely. In 1947, our mayor at the time — Roger Lapham — tried to replace streetcars with buses. He famously proclaimed: “Junk the cable cars!”
But a bad-ass woman named Friedel Klussmann made sure that protection for these classic cable cars was enshrined in the city charter. After a few years of bickering, protests and petitions, a ballot measure passed that required the city to buy the private Cal Cable line, which they did for $139,000.
It wasn’t the end of the wars. San Francisco eventually took over Cal Cable in 1952, and city hall succeeded in removing half our streetcar tracks. Dozens of the double-ended maroon-and-yellow cable cars were sold off as surplus.
A new era
The whole cable car system was falling into disrepair by the 1960s. The cables were worn and frayed. The electric motors powering them were on the fritz.
But in 1982, Mayor Dianne Feinstein personally led a campaign to completely rebuild the entire cable car system. To get it done, she partnered up with Mick Jagger, who posed for a photo op and made a brief appearance at San Francisco City Hall in support of saving the streetcars. Feinstein’s efforts paid off.
The cars were spruced up and repaired. The shabby tracks were shined. The spiffy reconstructed car barn was promised to last another century.
Today, Muni still runs three cable car lines on basically two sets of tracks, and a one-way ride on one will run you $8.
There are the two Powell Street lines that use smaller single-end cars that need a turntable to reverse their direction at each end of the route. The Powell-Mason line has traversed the exact same route for the last 135 years, still using the same equipment and propulsion methods. And there is the California Street cable car, which follows a small portion of the old Cal Cable line.
These double-ended cars are larger and have open-air seating at both ends flanking an indoor compartment in the middle for those who don’t want to brave the elements.
For some reason, the magic clangor of cable cars still persists and enchants.
Though a scant remnant of what they once were, the three remaining lines are almost always packed with riders, running every 8 minutes for 16 hours a day, clanking along with a lurch’s awkward grace and an artful clattering. The crowd hangs tight to the handholds and the poles and their hats through hairpin turns, and a daring few lean out with one arm, wildly waving to signal all is still quite well.
Davy Carren is an Oakland-based writer.
