This question just occurred to me, more-or-less out of nowhere.
What proportion of San Francisco Cable Car riders are regular local commuters, versus tourists?
The cable cars are an archaic obsolete relic, yet are assiduously maintained and kept in operation. They are certainly an entrenched iconic symbol of San Francisco, known world-wide (along with the Golden Gate Bridge).
They are a bit awkward for riders (big crowds, long lines, limited seating, not to mention those adventurous outboard seats where you hang on for dear life while going around turns). They are expensive to maintain, require customized replacement parts that aren’t in general production any more, and require special training and a lot of effort for the driver. (The cable car drivers and conductors are the elite of the elite of the Muni operator staff.)
They are certainly a major world-wide tourist attraction. That must certainly be the only real reason (and it’s a big one) that they are still running (well, as well as nostalgia). More than simply collecting the revenue from all the riders, as a tourist attraction they help bring all those touri$t$ who pend all those dollar in all the other businesses around town.
I think tourists are by far the majority of cable car riders. I suspect that local regular commuters, if any, would be only a minute fraction of cable car riders. Does anybody know? (Possibly a GQ question, or possibly in IMHO question.)
I have two classmates who live in San Francisco, one since 1998 the other since 2011. They both report that they have never ridden the cable car except to take out of town visitors.
Back in the mid-1970’s they shut down the entire cable car system for about a whole year for major renovations. The whole year was a major hit on the tourist industry, and those tourists who did come probably felt majorly defrauded.
One of the “improvements” was the addition of cordons and ticket machines at the major end-points of the major lines. So civilized, you have stand in line now instead of just crowding around. The bad old days were so much funner.
The article (relatively recent, from 2013) is about the million$ of dollar$ the city pays out each year to settle injury claims related to cable car accidents. It also cites the cable cars as “. . . a much beloved and valuable part of the city’s life and character” and “. . . a San Francisco icon vital to the city’s booming tourism industry”.
It doesn’t compare the tourism value of the cable cars (direct revenue or even indirect revenue to the wider local tourism industry) to the expense of those settlements, however.
They’re definitely in the middle of the city. But lots of people live and work along the lines. So a few riders are probably locals.
For business I stay in a hotel along one of the lines fairly regularly. For going to another section of town just a bit too far to walk quickly they’re useful. But not nearly as useful as the conventional busses that run the same or parallel routes.
Truth is, they’re not that much faster than walking. And not that much dryer in a downpour either. Certainly no warmer.
When was this? In the bad old days (when people crowded around and stampeded to get on the cars), fares were collected en-route. The conductor walked down the center aisle and riders (most of them anyway) stuck their hands out with the fares, and the conductor grabbed whatever he could.
Collecting fares from the outboard riders was a crap shoot. Some would pay the fare, if the conductor could reach their outstretched arm.
Now, you get a ticket from the ticket machine. You line up, with cordons to keep people in line. There is a turnstile at the head of the line. I’m not sure if you have to put your ticket into the turnstile, or if there’s a conductor there collecting tickets like at a movie theater. I think there’s a conductor there.
I’m not sure if there’s a turnstile at every terminal platform. I know there’s one at the Ghiradelli Square terminal.
At the various stops en-route, people could get on if there’s an empty seat. (Good luck with that.) Maybe it’s a crapshoot if they pay or not.
In the days when people just crowded around and stampeded to get on board, I got on at the Ghiradelli Square (Fisherman’s Wharf area) platform.
Another guy got on, with a HUGE monster-size dog on a leash. I think it was an Irish Wolfhound. He sat in one of the outboard seats, and the dog stood alongside the car. When we got going up the steep hill (Nob Hill I think?), the dog galloped along the whole way. All the tourists took pictures. The guy said that’s how his dog gets his exercise.
Just an anecdote but as a kid in SF in the mid-1970’s pre-upgrade they seemed to be a little more commonly used by commuters, mostly people hauling stuff like baskets of groceries up the hills. Lots of little old ladies - this was back when it cost a quarter to ride. I can remember riding them with my mother a half-dozen times just as simple transit.
But try as I night I can’t remember where we were riding though - it could have been on now retired lines, I can’t be sure. Certainly we didn’t live near the Financial District or Fisherman’s Wharf.
Cables and SF have a long and colorful history, which will not be repeated here.
But the reason they are still operated is because the City Charter specifies that they will be operated in perpetuity. Or the Charter is amended to remove that amendment.
I can’t answer for San Francisco in particular but the streetcars in New Orleans (basically the same thing) are used by all groups including commuters, students and tourists. The St. Charles line from Uptown to the French Quarter is still a really cheap and charming route. I went to college there and streetcars were a preferred method of transportation as long as you were going roughly where they were. They aren’t especially fast but they are romantic in a throwback kind of way and they will get you fairly close to home 24 hours a day for the many people that live fairly close to a streetcar line. $1.25 one way beats a cab every time if you are on a budget and have 40 minutes to spare for the trip. The ambiance is infinitely better than any bus I have ever been on and streetcars don’t have to deal with most traffic either.
I was in San Francisco a few months ago, and rode the cable cars. During the time I rode, I’d say upwards of 95% were tourists. I do, however, remember at least one girl who hopped off in a residential neighborhood after the cable car operator said something like “see you tomorrow, Jane!” (or whatever her name was). It very much seemed like she was a local who was riding home from work.
Also, we talked to the concierge at the hotel where we were staying, and she told us that early in the morning, quite a few locals took the cable cars to get to work. She said she didn’t do it everyday, but she did it maybe half the time. I’m guessing that depending on where you live, it could be very convenient.
They are pretty cool. We found that during the day, they weren’t really practical, being far too crowded to be able to count on them for actual transportation. At night, though, they were quite convenient. We took one from Union Square to a restaurant that was maybe a 20 minute ride away in a very non-commercial area. Had dinner, hopped the street car back to our hotel at maybe 11 pm. It was far more convenient than driving (no place to park) and about 1/10th the price of a cab.
Of course, once we figured out that Uber had $7 rides anywhere within San Francisco, all bets were off. We Ubered everywhere after finding that out.
The majority are definitely tourists. But they are used for real transportation as well. For a few locations they provide the best public transportation.
For example, I once had to get to an event at the Mark Hopkins hotel, which is at the top of Nob Hill. The easiest way to get there was on the California Street cable car. No bus line gets close to the top of the hill.
This also suggests that the rider mix might be very different at specific hours. Before 08:00 a.m., perhaps, lots of local commuters going to their jobs in the tourism business? Then, all day, the tourists.
If that so, however, could be a problem for those same commuters getting back home. At any reasonable quitting time (for employees who start work around 08:00), the cable cars would still be full of tourists.
I lived in the City in summer 1981, and the Powell-Hyde car was actually the most practical way for me to get to work. I lived in Duboce Triangle, near the Mint, and would ride a streetcar downtown and at Hallidie Square transfer to the cable car. I had a job at Hyde & Beach, near Ghirardelli Square. This was before the 1983 rebuild, and it was still fairly common for passengers to help the two-man crew to turn the cars on the turntable. Doing so put us in position to get the prime seats, at the front corners. It certainly made my summer the full San Francisco experience.
Alas, when I got off in the afternoon, the tourists were out in full force, meaning long lines to board at Aquatic Park. So I usually took various bus route combinations to get back home.
While of course the lines are big tourist draws, I think local ridership might surprise you. San Francisco has a large millennial generation professional population (like most cities) and riding the cable cars is considered a somewhat slow but quintessential SF experience. I have a friend whose kid lives at California and Van Ness, works downtown, and rides the California line, as an example. So I’m thinking, for a commute, yes, for a leisurely day out, yes, at night or when time is more limited, a bus would usually be faster.
Also, keep in mind that SF is a not a warm place. It can be breezy and 60-ish degrees 10 months of the year, so that some (especially females) might find a bus to be more comfortable most of the time.