San Francisco is always associated with its historic cable cars, but the city is often overlooked for its historic streetcars that now run year-round in regular service. Above is the classic PCC car from Philadelphia Suburban from the 1940’s. Dallas, Texas and other cities have run historic streetcars on certain lines, but as far as I can tell, SF has been the most serious about this.
Cool. Higher resolution please.
As a real service, just for the T’rists.
Make it a real service, and ban cars?
http://theregister.co.uk/2010/08/20/spanair_malware/
San Francisco looks very interesting! your photos make me want to travel there as a tourist and spend an exorbitant amount of money. Rice a Roni, streetcar hills, music, food, it sounds like San Francisco has it all!
John, Boston has been running Street/Subway Cars on it’s Green Line for more than 100 years ! The oldest in the Country !
#6 “The oldest in the Country!”
I don’t think so. New Orleans has had them in continuous operation for over 150 years. They began operation in January 1835.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcars_in_New_Orleans
ask motorman for terminal? what like positive or negative?
#8 Most likely for the people that want to recharge their Ipad, ipod, iphone. ?8^)
Thanks, John, for alerting us to this cool think S.F. is doing.
I will definitely buy a pass next time I’m in the S.F. and ride the various ones I find. I love those old street cars.
We have street cars here in Porland but they are all the euro-modern type. I’d much rather have the old semi-open type you can jump on and off of like in New Orleans of S.F.
Toronto Ontario runs thousands of them a day, they carry millions of people a year and are the most used form of public transit in a city of 3.5 million.
They cause nothing but traffic jams and are the worst form of mass transit imaginable
Yes, they are for the tourists. I’ve been to SF many times because I love the city. The streetcars are great… I get off BART and take the streetcar down to Fishermen’s Wharf or North Beach. The cable cars are a really lousy way to get around, even if they are fun.
San Francisco is one of only 4 cities where tourists don’t need cars. I am sure the locals bitch about Muni and BART, but they are great systems for tourists. The only times I have ever rented a car was when I wanted to go down to Monterey or up to Napa.
Hard to tell from the picture, but it looks pretty empty.
No ‘roo bars?
Looking at it, thinking how some ex-Navy guys have painted it. No chrome, no unpainted surfaces, everything in gloss enamel.
Not to burst anyone’s bubble here, but all of the 1940’s “streamliner” streetcars running in San Francisco are old San Francisco streetcars simply painted in the colors of the other transit agencies. You can ascertain this because all of them are the same SF MUNI green and cream color on the inside, which has not been repainted.
There are few old streetcars brought in from other places, and those are from Europe (the orange ones and a couple others, and the Coney Island open top one.
I think it is one of the very few things SF has done right. That, and the eventual teardown of the Embarcadero Freeway after the 89 earthquake, which enabled the Embarcadero to become a nice place to drive along.
New Orleans has been running streetcars continuously since the turn of the previous century.