Streetsblog SF has posted a short film about the temporary Castro & 17th Street Plaza which is currently a pilot project to test the feasibility of a permanent closure.

There was plenty of skepticism of the project all around, but just as with the interviews in the film, we’ve heard positive things from the Muni Operators who no longer have to contend with traffic coming at them from every which way.

Remember that both Muni and BART fares will be going up starting July 1.

As of this Wednesday a trip on Muni will become $2.00 ($0.75 for senior, disabled and youth riders) and exact change is required to pay as you board vehicles so be sure you have extra quarters or dollar bills. Monthly Fast Pass prices are also going up, but work out to be a better value for those who ride Muni more than 10 days per month.

• Muni fare increase information
• Fast Pass sales information and locations
• BART fare increase information

Cable Car fares won’t go up further and do not require any additional fare for monthly Fast Pass holders.

Until the Academy Award winning film Milk was released, Harvey Milk was not very well known outside San Francisco. For the upwards of 500,000 who have traveled to San Francisco this weekend for the annual Gay Pride Celebration, it was almost certainly “required viewing” and they will find a very familiar looking city since it was filmed entirely on location.

Some may even get to ride one of the film’s props, the green and cream colored streetcar which appeared in a scene were protestors marching to City Hall and can be found nearly every day on the F-Market & Wharves historic streetcar line.

Milk focussed on Harvey Milk’s gay rights activism, but if all he had was the gay vote he wouldn’t have likely won a seat on the Board of Supervisors. Harvey was interested in every issue that effected the neighborhood from school closures and child care to dog poop.

He also championed public transit, being the first District Supervisor to ride Muni every day using the then-new monthly FastPass. That is an issue close to our hearts at Market Street Railway and even if it’s not what he’s best known for, I think it’s important we remember he was more than just a gay rights advocate.

Several years ago, Market Street Railway president Rick Laubscher had shared this idea of dedicating one of the San Francisco streetcars to Harvey and when the preview trailer for Milk was released last year including the scene with streetcar no. 1051 it was the perfect opportunity. I contacted Bevan Dufty who now representing the Castro District and the next thing I knew we were scheduling the dedication ceremony.

When I made the announcement at our board meeting, a long-time Muni employee in the audience spoke up, sounding choked up as he declared Harvey Milk was the strongest advocate Muni has ever had on the Board of Supervisors. I saw the same sentiment from everyone who Market Street Railway worked with at the SFMTA and City Hall to make this dedication and onboard memorial happen.

For those who’ve only recently come to know about Harvey Milk as a gay rights pioneer, I’d hope a ride onboard no. 1051 would be a chance to learn more about our neighborhood hero.

Update: Over the Pride 2009 weekend, the car was graffitied with antigay slurs.

From 1893-1902 the cable cars of the Powell-Mason line were painted in a yellow and red livery of our namesake, the Market Street Railway Company. The original car no. 15 would have been painted in this livery when it entered service in 1894, so its only fitting its replacement be painted in honor of predecessor. Yesterday’s debut was very well attended and you’ll find many more photos in our Flickr photo group of no. 15’s debut.

The latest addition to the Powell Street “vintage livery” fleet hits the streets for the first time today (Monday, June 22), with a public ceremony at 10:45 a.m. at the Cable Car Barn, Washington and Mason Streets to unveil newly built car No. 15. The Chronicle touts it this morning with lots of detail on its construction. (Click on the thumbnail below by Carmen Magana of the SFMTA for a big, glorious view.)

Rather than repeating the Chronicle’s details, we’ll mention that the cable car shop and top Muni leadership have been very receptive to Market Street Railway’s efforts to expand the number of vintage liveries on the Powell Street cable cars. Last September, heavily rebuilt Powell car no. 25 returned to the streets in a red and creme United Railroads livery, the one the Powell cars featured on the fateful morning of April 18, 1906, when most of the cable car system was destroyed by earthquake and fire.

The yellow, red, and buff livery being unveiled today was the immediate predecessor to that red United Railroads livery, at least for the Powell-Mason cars. In the days of the Market Street Railway Company of 1893, which operated the Powell cars from that date until United Railroads took over in 1902, cable cars were color-coded by line. Since only the Powell-Mason line has survived from the lines then housed at the Washington-Mason car barn, that line’s livery was chosen for replication on car No. 15. David Dugan of Market Street Railway recreated the “owner’s logo” on the lower side panels by using historic photos to design a decal that the cable car painters installed. MSR also purchased some special paint for the red pinstripes, saving the paint crew from going through the exhaustive city procurement process.

With the introduction of car No. 15, almost all the major historic Powell Street cable car liveries are represented in the active fleet. A few of the existing vintage schemes will be tweaked in coming years to enhance their historic accuracy, and Market Street Railway hopes that the next Powell cable car to be rebuilt will be painted in the first Municipal Railway green and cream scheme, the one on the Powell cars in 1947 — when Friedel Klussman stepped up and saved them from extinction.

Did the F-line split Fisherman’s Wharf in two? Anecdotal evidence suggests it might have, albeit accidentally, to the detriment of the western part of the Wharf area. But a solution is at hand: an extension of vintage streetcar service westward to Aquatic Park and Fort Mason, a project now in environmental review. This project, currently led by the National Park Service with strong Muni support, promises very positive impacts for the western Wharf area as well.

Three ex-Muni PCC cars are being slowly but steadily readied for a new life down the coast in San Diego. That city’s now-iconic red ‘trolleys’ (actually light rail vehicles) represented the first new American urban surface rail system in decades in 1980. Much expanded, the San Diego Trolley remains one of the great rail success stories. At its core is a loop of track encircling downtown, serving the business district, waterfront, convention center, Gaslamp Quarter, and the Padres’ ballpark. Along the length of the track loop, new residential towers have sprouted as more residents forsake the suburbs for the attractions downtown.

Harry Mathis, Chairman of the Board of the Metropolitan Transit System (MTS), sees a major opportunity there. “The red trolleys are really an interurban line that happens to run through the middle of downtown. We want to bring streetcars back downtown to share those tracks.”

Mathis, who grew up in San Francisco “standing on the steps as the old streetcars roared through the Twin Peaks Tunnel,” recognizes that any new service has to complement — not compete or interfere with — light-rail (trolley) service on the Blue and Orange lines, both of which terminate downtown but run more than a dozen miles east and south. “We’d only be running off-peak — between 9:00am and 4:00pm on weekdays, and possibly on the weekends — with charters available in the evenings.”

The three PCCs that would start the ‘Silver Line’ service are ex-Muni cars No. 1122, 1123, and 1170. They’ve been renumbered 529, 530, and 531 respectively, to continue the sequence San Diego used on its own PCCs which ended service in 1949. They were acquired from Gunnar Henrioulle of South Lake Tahoe, who purchased a number of Muni PCCs upon their initial retirement. (Market Street Railway purchased four ex-Muni ‘Baby Tens’ from Henrioulle several years ago and gifted them to Muni for future restoration.)

All three San Diego PCCs are being stored under cover at MTS’ light rail shops, where volunteers for San Diego Vintage Trolley, Inc., a wholly-owned nonprofit subsidiary of MTS, are working on them. Two have had their front ends repainted in the pea-green & cream used in the 1940s, primarily to show visitors what the future could look like. The third car is being rebuilt with new body panels, with professional labor donated by Carlos Guzman, whose company has the contract to perform body and paint work on the red trolley fleet. The craftsmanship is excellent, but the work must be fit between paid projects so restoration will take time. Cost of materials is covered by public grants and corporate and individual donations.

The restoration is managed on a volunteer basis by Dave Slater, and the many volunteers include native San Franciscan Dennis Frazier, Market Street Railway members both. Since the original San Diego Trolley system was mostly built on freight railroad tracks, the PCC wheels need to be changed to railroad profile. The overhead not being compatible with poles, pantographs will be installed (though the rear trolley poles will be retained for visual effect), and wheelchair lifts will be installed in the front stepwells.

Once restored, the San Diego Silver Line would run a clockwise loop around the downtown, a direction dictated by existing track. Mathis hopes this is just a starting point, a proof of concept like San Francisco’s 1980s Trolley Festivals. He envisions a line going north into Balboa Park, much like San Diego’s historic PCCs did in the 1940s. He believes 2015, the centennial of the park, might be a good target date to inaugurate such service, but acknowledges there’s no current funding. Another possible line might connect downtown with the airport. These lines might be served by additional renovated PCCs if they could be found, or by modern low-floor streetcars such as run in Portland, Seattle, and Tacoma today.

So, San Diego, which showed America the way to build cost-effective rail transit almost 30 years ago, now seems poised to go ‘back to the future’, reincarnating its PCC era as well.

Should Muni’s vintage streetcars and iconic cable cars be open for sponsorship by corporations or other groups willing to pay for the privilege? One of the agency’s Board members has asked Executive Director Nat Ford to look into it, and he’s in the process of doing that now. Initial press coverage seemed skeptical, but Director Malcolm Heinicke says he’s just talking about discreet identification of a sponsor’s name on the vehicles.

Market Street Railway is all for Muni trying to raise more revenue, consistent with our mission to “preserve historic transit in San Francisco.” Part of that mission is making the vintage equipment seem truly special, which is why the streetcars don’t carry exterior advertising. (The cable cars have had exterior ads since the 1960s.) Discreet plaques on the cars might work, and tasteful but highly visible interior recognition on the cars, perhaps in the form of a sponsorship “car card” in the advertising racks, could be another option.

The bigger question is how much money could Muni reasonably expect to raise from such an effort? Based on our own experience, the answer is not very much, if any, after expenses are taken into account.

Most of the cable cars currently have sponsorship plaques on them. This dates back to the early 1980s when the system was rebuilt and then-Mayor Feinstein decided to raise some of the local share of the cost from businesses. Back then, the Mayor made personal and heartfelt pitches directly to CEOs, saying their support was essential to preserve this national historic landmark. She did well in that campaign, several million dollars worth, but the companies were responding to strong appeals directly from a strong mayor at a time when the cable car system was in a state of physical collapse. Also, there were a lot more large companies headquartered in San Francisco 25 years ago, and the economy was much better then than now.

Fundraising is time-consuming in any environment, especially this one. In evaluating this opportunity, it will be important for Muni to properly estimate the amount of staff time and other resources it would require to solicit and service these sponsorships. They shouldn’t underestimate those costs, because they can be considerable, especially if it’s not a Mayor’s pet project. And they should evaluate the market for such sponsorships before plunging in. One way to do that at no cost is simply to see if any companies come forward and express interest in a sponsorship over the next few weeks in response to the publicity already generated by the idea. Marketers are always looking for positive exposure, and if they think this would provide it, at least some should call to try to get in on the ground floor.

Comments?

Did you see the coverage of “President Obama’s” ride on the F-line?  Besides the big Chronicle story, the TV coverage got replayed all over the country; really great tourism promotion for the city, just when we need it.  The back story here is that it all sprung from the imaginative mind of our newest board member, David Perry, one of the best publicists in the city.

When David learned that his client, the Wax Museum, was getting the first “Barack Obama” on the west coast, he thought of another client, the owners of the USS Potomac, FDR’s old presidential yacht, a wonderful piece of historic preservation by Marti Burchell which she operates as a charter boat on the Bay.  Why not have “FDR” himself escort “Obama” on his yacht.  Turns out, there’s a great FDR impressionist that sails with the Potomac.  Booked.  But then how to get the presidents the rest of the way to the Wharf?  Enter Market Street Railway, David’s most recent (and pro-bono) client.  We loved the idea and helped David put together the plan with Muni’s own PR chief, Judson True, to use the open top Blackpool “boat tram” on one of its regular shuttle runs from the Ferry Building to the Wax Museum.  Done.

The whole thing came together in a great spirit of conviviality and good cheer, spurred in large measure by David’s easy-going, tongue-in-cheek approach to the event, which was, as he cheerfully acknowledged, an old-fashioned PR stunt. Perhaps seeking a break from the endless stream of bad news these days, everyone, including the reporters and photographers, loved playing along.

In today’s world, of course, there’s no chance a President would be permitted by the Secret Service to cruise The Embarcadero in an open-top vehicle, but David took no chances even with this inanimate version, providing a suitably suited “agent” to guard the inanimate Obama.

But perhaps the best part came when “Muni One,” as the presidental tram was dubbed, pulled up to its first passenger stop at the Ferry Building. The presidents and paparazzi were in back, leaving the front empty. But the would-be passengers just stood transfixed at the stop platform, reluctant to board even after being waved on board. As one out-of-town rider got on, he said to your correspondent as he paid his fare, “Only in San Francisco.”

You got that right.

By the way, we owe our readers an apology for not promoting this event in advance.  No excuses, just a screw-up.  Sorry to anyone who might have wanted to see it live. But you can still relive it by watching the great video David made for YouTube.

Now is a good time to be living in the Castro District. Wednesday evenings we now have a farmers market and yesterday the 17th Street pedestrian plaza at the corner of Market & Castro officially opened. For now the plaza is only a 2-6 month trial with temporary fixtures, but it already seems to be popular and getting a good response.

On Saturday May 16, the neighborhood will be holding an opening celebration starting a 12:30 PM including a sidewalk sale put on by the Merchants of Upper Castro and Market. It will be a good time to hop on the F-line and check it out if you haven’t already.

More on the opening…

» Mayor Newsom Unveils SF’s First Pavement to Parks Plaza (Streetsblog)
» Castro plaza opens, three more on tap (SF Gate)
» Castro Ped Plaza Launches Amid Much Sitting, Strolling (Curbed SF)