It's always been interesting to me that many years ago when the big push was to get rid of streetcars and trolley buses in favor of diesel vehicles (and we won't mention who the primary perpetrators were) San Francisco resisted the change. Today that legacy remains strong in what's possibly the largest city street electric transit system in the country. Does anyone know the reason(s) behind this wisdom so long ago and continuing even today?

A big reason is that SF's electric transit vehicles get electric power comes from the city's hydroelectric Hetch Hetchy Water & Power Project. Additionally, trolley buses perform better on hills than diesel buses, witness the conversion of the 55-Sacramento diesel bus was converted to the 1-California trolley bus.

Having ridden a diesel bus the last time I was in San Francisco, I can attest to the fact that their diesel buses seem to have two throttle positions, idle & FULL. I wonder what their MTBF is.

-Hudson

I'd imagine it's much harder to maintenance and maintain an electric operation compared to a diesel, especially in a city. I'm not saying I favor it but I think that's the way SF saw it. The only reason it's still around like it is has to be because of tourism.

Bankrupt companies? City governments? Public operators? I'm sure you probably refer to General Motors, thanks to Bradford Snell and Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

Once upon a time in America, people forget, public transit was a for-profit enterprise. Often saddled with city charters that kept fares artificially low, transit companies had to make money when facing competition from the automobile, jitneys, growing cities, and massive infrastructure investment to keep car lines open. The companies had a first goal to remain profitable for their shareholders, even if the profits were small. Often the bus or the electric trolley bus made more sense, than paying real estate taxes on miles of rail, or maintaining overhead and outmoded power generation equipment.

People also forget that in cities like San Fransicco, municipal operators like MUNI were created to put the private transit companies out of business. MUNI's first car line was designed to compete directly against the private, tax-paying Market Street Railway. After MSR was purchased in the 1940s, MUNI abandoned many car lines and busituted them. The once-great MUNI system is a shadow of its former self, though still impressive.

The GM streetcar conspiracy is possibly one of the largest false conspiracy theories that pervades railway preservation to this day.* The theory was perpetuated by Bradford Snell, then a young attorney, in the 1970s. One of the largest detractors of Snell was George Hilton, a preeminient economic historian who wrote the definitive book on the business side of electric traction in North America, The Electric Interurban Railways in America.

When museums and museum volunteers spout the GM streetcar conspiracy in their car talks to visitors, we do ourselves a major disservice. Doing so, removes our interpretive narrative from facts and robs us of a bigger education opportunity to discuss how cities developed. Instead of talking about such things as suburbanization, city governments who were hostile to streetcars, corporate charters that demanded that fares be kept artificially low, etc., we sink to the level of a conspiracy theorist.

*The largest streetcar system in America, the Chicago Surface Lines was abandoned by a public operator, the Chicago Transit Authority. PAT in Pittsburg abandoned large swaths of the once great Pittsburg Railways. Even the "bad guy" National City Lines turned over several private transit properties with streetcar service intact, only to be abandoned by the public operator (Los Angeles, St. Louis and Philadelphia come to mind). Cities like St. Louis had bankrupt transit systems going back to the 1920s. But don't take my word for it, see this excellent article from Transportation Quarterly: http://debunkportland.com/printables/TQOrigin.pdf

I'm of a mind that while grand schemes are seldom consciously orchestrated, there are reasons why things work out the way they do, and often in ways that serve the interests of those with power and influence.

That said, there are several reason San Francisco is unique in regards to the continuous operation of electric streetcars and coaches.

Hetch Hetchy - Provides the Muni with its own hydro power. It is a matter of no small controversy that this was never turned into a municipal utility, and the city's citizens continue to rely upon PG&E, but this is another story.

Hills - As mentioned above. This, along with nostalgia and tourism explains the cable cars.

Municipalization - Created a more enduring (some might say inert) institution that was not subject to the market pressures of private transit.

Hills Again - The streetcar lines that survived used tunnels or private right of ways that saved time and could not easily be converted for use by buses.

Geography - San Francisco's location at the end of a peninsula encouraged more urban density and discouraged (by a matter of degrees) the suburban sprawl that was found elsewhere.

Do not read to much into the preservation of San Francisco's streetcar lines. San Francisco was one of the first public owned transit systems in the country. It created a large lumbering machine that was run by a corrupt city government that was controlled by the labor unions. Kept in mind that San Francisconwas the only place to have two man PCC cars. But even with all the difficulty San Francisco has getting anything done, the only street car lines that survived were the ones that used tunnels or private right way that made conversion to diesel busses difficult. Also the city charter made purchasing replacement busses a financing problem.

As late as the late 1960s, when there was a plan in the works for s streetcar subway, the City tried to float a bond issue to raise money to buy diesel busses to replace the streetcars. I spent many evenings on safety islands passing out literature and talking to riders in an effort to defeat the bond proposition. We were just barely successful. In recent years the MUNI was on several occasions run by trolley fans. Most recently this pension admitted that the trolley busses were probably finished since they cost 5 to 10 times more that what a diesel bus costs.

There is nothing noble in the way the streetcars in SF were saved.

Philadelphia had two-man PCC cars, too. I remember a number of conductors on PCC's, many of whom were men who were on light duty due to injury or older men who could not qualify to become motormen.

Please tell me no one's actually doing this, except to refute the falsehood when grilled about it.

PLEASE.

Re: GM conspiracy - I remind our visitors that the DC conduit system was pretty much at the end of its useful life. With declining ridership there was no real incentive for the private owner to invest further capital to sustain an expensive infrastructure. Congress took care of the rest after the 1955 strike.

Wesley

Sorry to disappoint, but I've heard it stated when "visiting" a museum, had fellow operators at other museums spout it.

The other variation that's just as wrong was that the North Shore was abandoned solely for a tax write-off by the parent corporation.

Stuff like this just ignores the business and political complexity that was privately-owned city transit.

I think there's a missing discernment regarding this conspiracy when placing it in a either \ or context. Yes, as a plan to maximize profits in the growing automobile culture, there was an understandable intent to open up a new market and we cannot lose sight or ignore that the parties were found guilty in a court of law. That being said, folks tend to blur that distinction with another, which is a part of Hilton's main thesis, that the companies that had traction properties failed to acknowledge the trend that they were surrounded by, which was the automobile culture. This conspiracy did not kill off the properties but took advantage of an already existing trend which then created an opportunity for GM etc. Hence they were fined $1.00 after litigation.
The downfall was already in place when the power companies had to divest of their traction properties and there was a synergy between selling power, electrifying the countryside and supporting that growth through a diversified portfolio. Separating the two was the beginning of the end, as federal and state funded highway improvements began to eat away at traffic.

The interesting irony I see in the traction companies failing to see the trending of the automobile culture around them that would lead to their demise, is the automobile culture failing to notice that eventually they would become a victim of their own success. The failure to extend the CTA Yellow Line up to the Cook County border, the attendant cost to resurrect the NSL right of way, and the rush hour saturation of I-94 alongside the former right of way is certainly an inadvertent comment on the power of market forces you cited that do not necessarily equate with common sense. And so it goes. The theory that there is some master conspiracy that doomed the traction industry is laughable. Mistaking a roulette wheel of market forces for a intent.

One must remember, as Bruce pointed out, that GM and others were convicted of conspiring to monopolize the supply of busses to transit companies. They were not convicted of conspiring to monopolize the acquisition of transit companies to convert them to busses and doom the streetcar. It's an important distinction that Snell and others seem to gloss over.

The separation of the electric power industry from the transit business (something we can thank FDR and the New Deal for) was probably the death nail to electric street railway transit in many small and medium sized cities.

As laughable as it is, such conspiracy theories are pervasive in popular culture today. I tend to think it is part of our overall educational mission to inform and educate, even on these complex issues. Maybe we can dispel such rubbish in the minds of some visitors.

Chicago bought many 2 man rear entrance PCC cars, 3 leaf doors in the rear, 1 leaf in the center, and 2 in the front. They didn't last long.