Event shows off vintage Muni cars
As history buffs will tell you, San Francisco was built on public transit.
The Gold Rush drew people here, but it was transportation that carved the face of the city, shaping the places where people live and work today. From the historic Barbary Coast in the city’s northeast and up Market Street, trams and cable cars — then a technological innovation — brought people inland and seeded areas that came to be known as the Castro and Noe Valley. Later, electric street cars would give rise to farther-flung neighborhoods such as the Richmond and Sunset districts.
At Muni Heritage Weekend, people could meet the city’s architects in person: Fifteen sparkling, restored vehicles that have carried countless generations to their destinations.
Many of the event’s visitors are nostalgic locals, said Rick Laubscher, president of nonprofit Market Street Railway, which operates the San Francisco Railway Museum and helps Muni put on the event.
“It’s people who remember these vehicles from when they were young themselves, and they bring their kids, their grandkids,” Laubscher said. “You’ll see them as they ride, with a wistful look, because they remember the sounds, the bells, the feelings.”
Some have traveled cross-country from Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston and New York City. They’re people who “lost their heritage vehicles” when cities scrapped them in favor of newer ones, Laubscher said. San Francisco has retained many of its own.
One cable car, “Big 19,” built in 1883, is the oldest and largest in the world, Laubscher said.
On Saturday, crowds gathered and gaped at the gleaming vintage vehicles, pacing through those in the lot outside the Railway Museum and waiting for rides on the operational cars. Laubscher was elated at the public reception.
“We’ve been filling these things all day,” he said, gesturing to the cars packed with passengers. Heritage Weekend has run for more than a decade, with two years off during the pandemic, but “this is maybe the busiest one yet,” he said.
Stephanie Auerbach and her family had been looking forward to the event for years. During a walk in the Mission District early in the pandemic, they’d passed a Muni garage where a cable car was being restored. Workers let them stay and watch, and told them to keep an eye out for the Heritage Weekend.
“We brought our 3-yearold, and he is enjoying this bus right now,” Auerbach said, nodding toward him as he laughed through the driver-side window of the Fageol-Twin Coach.
Built in 1947, its cream and green exterior resembles the Muni rail cars that still carry passengers on Market Street’s F line — but with its giant rubber wheels, it’s clearly a bus. Unlike many of its peers when it first rolled out, the coach had two engines so that it could take on Powell Street’s hills and replace the cable car there.
But residents weren’t having it, said Louis Guzzo, Muni’s chief maintenance officer. They pushed to keep the cable cars, “so these things ran for a minute on some other lines, and then they were mothballed,” he said.
“When we got it, one engine was seized, and the other wasn’t running,” Guzzo said. Both needed to be rebuilt. His team also cut rusted metal from the aluminum body and rewelded it, straightened out the damaged and crooked bumpers, and redid the paint. The restoration took three years — and some vehicles needed five.
Maria Molina, who lives in Daly City, brought her children to San Francisco for a weekend outing. While downtown, they spotted the crowd gathered around the old vehicles. “It was lucky, because we didn’t know about this,” she said.
A fire truck caught Molina’s eye. As her kids peered into the interior, she explained that her grandfather had been a firefighter in Nicaragua. Then her son, Elias, pulled them into the line for one of the cars — “the one that doesn’t have a roof,” he said.
If public transportation shaped today’s San Francisco, how are modern transit decisions helping shape tomorrow’s?
The city faces a daunting state mandate to build 82,000 housing units by 2031. Much of that development will be in the western neighborhoods, where housing is less dense than in the east. The area will need more robust transit that’s responsive to new travel patterns, including those spurred by the pandemic.
“Increasingly, folks from the west side are needing to commute or do their shopping to the south,” said Jeffrey Tumlin, head of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. That probably calls for better connecting Muni to the Daly City BART Station, as well as upgrading the 28 and 29 bus lines along 19th Avenue and Sunset Boulevard, respectively. At some point, those buses might get dedicated lanes.
“One of the great things about San Francisco is what it does in the transition from bust to boom,” Tumlin said. “And we’re in that transition moment.”
Plus, as attendees at Saturday’s events saw, “it’s an easy and fun place to get around,” he added.