It was always a battle over the status if the cables as a part of the transit system. Some want it to be another form of transportation, like buses, coaches, streetcars (still on Market?) and light rail. Others wanted to turn it into a tourist thing.
Both reached a compromise:
The tourists get treated like tourists: stand in line, buy a ticket, hand ticket to agent.
The locals still get to use their monthly passes for the cables.
Note: the California Street line is not the one on the picture postcards - they simply run up California from the Embarcadero to Van Ness. No hills to crest, no cool pics to take. It is the most transit-like lines.
The two lines that go over the hill (don’t remember names of lines or exactly which hill - will guess Russian) are the ones with the lines of tourists and ticket vending machines.
The few locals which still use those have other ways of boarding that do not involve standing in line.
[nitpick on myself]
Ah, yes. Thank you for reminding me of the correct spelling of Ghirardelli (which I wrote as Ghiradelli a few posts up). If I may quote Chief Bromden from the final line of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, “I been away a long time.”
The rebuild was in 1983? I remember it being during a year when I lived in the area (Berkeley or Livermore), which would have been in the 1970’s. Maybe I just remember it from reading the newspapers. I was living in Honolulu in 1983.
How do they manage that? Do they get to stand in a separate area and board first by flashing their pass at the conductor at the turnstile?
Mr Downtown writes (a few posts above):
Boarding the cable cars used to be a part of “the full San Francisco experience”, before everybody had to start standing in lines like civilized people. After a few people help the crew turn the car around and push the car off of the turntable, while everybody else was crowded around, then everybody stampeded to get on the car, because there were generally more people waiting than the car could carry. Nobody gets to do that any more.
The cable cars are driven by cables that run under the street (duh!). The car has an arm that reaches down through the slot in the street to the cable, with a claw on the end that grabs the cable.
Note that the Powell line intersects the California line. One of the cables under the street must run below the other cable. Did it ever occur to anyone to wonder how the car with the grabber on the lower cable gets past the upper cable?
The driver, who operates the car entirely manually, has to drop the cable as the car approaches the intersection, and grab it again after the car passes the intersection. The car going uphill has to be going fast enough to continue coasting uphill until the driver can grab the cable. If the driver has even a moment of inattention at just the wrong moment and forgets to drop the cable at just the right moment, the grabber arm smashes into the upper cable, doing major damage to the cable (and probably breaking it) and any other involved parts. This shuts down the entire system until the cable can be fished out and repaired. If he drops the cable too soon, the uphill car may not make it through the intersection to the point where he can grab the cable again.
“Note: the California Street line is not the one on the picture postcards - they simply run up California from the Embarcadero to Van Ness. No hills to crest, no cool pics to take. It is the most transit-like lines.”
You don’t consider Nob Hill a hill? I sure do. The run of the California line is up and down Nob Hill, West<–>East.
Your comment suggests that you don’t know SF, used to be.
Do they still give out boxes of Rice-a-Roni? Is it still the San Francisco treat? My god, I haven’t heard that jingle in decades, but it’s instinctively right there whenever someone mentions San Francisco cable cars.
BRB… someone is ringing a bell and now I’m drooling.
This is fascinating! I saw the route map above and I noticed that the lines crossed. My first thought was how a cable car on the lower line traversed the crossing. I imagined a device built into the car that would “trip” over the upper line and cause a mechanical switching from a grabber at the back of the car behind the crossing to one at the front of the car in front of the crossing. I figured such a device could be made dependable enough for street car use. But I was wrong and the truth is just as interesting.
More like they have a habit of wearing lightweight clothing, and not much of it, almost regardless of the temperature. Which results in them enjoying the cool outdoors less than their more heavily clad male counterparts.
Back when I lived in snow country we had several young women who worked in our office. Most of whom wore short dresses or skirts and lightweight silk-like blouses. With open-toed shoes or even sandals. They were quite stylish and attractive.
Meanwhile I was wearing lightweight long underwear top & bottom, a long sleeve dress shirt & lightweight wool dress pants, and a sweater. And boots with heavy wool socks. And I had a heavy coat & gloves for outdoors.
I was warm enough. Though they complained incessantly about the cold it was both outside and in our offices. The cold was identical; it was their fashion choices that made the difference.
The California line is definitely the less touristy one. There are a couple of hotels at its western end on Van Ness, not to mention the Embarcadero Hyatt at the eastern end, so there will be some visitors riding it and transferring to the Powell lines, but it’s probably more popular with people going from Pacific Heights to work downtown.
One of my old indicators of “Is it tourist season?” was if I could leave my office at 5th and Mission and hop onto a Powell car to ride up to 450 Suffer* without waiting in line. During tourist season, it’s far, far quicker to just walk all the way.
An old nickname for 450 Sutter St. - 26 floors of dentists and doctors. Gorgeous building with occasionally uncomfortable goings-on inside. Give the page a moment to start the slideshow…
The California line is less of a tourist attraction and doesn’t have crowds waiting to board. I ride it occasionally for public transportation. At one point, I had a job on the line, and used the cable car for part of my commute. I also use it sometimes to get from my office, which is on California Street, to an appointment on Van Ness. I rarely ride the more touristy Powell Street line, but if I did, I would not board at the turnaround where the tourists wait.
Yep. On a good day, I’d say a cable car ride is just as fun as any rollercoaster or thrill ride at an amusement park. I think the California Street line is definitely worth a ride if you have the time – I love the view at California and Mason, it’s fantastic in every direction.
I had to double-check the date to see if the above is a zombie post from the days when Christopher Columbus built the first cable car line in S. F.
The cable barn has been open to visitors since at least as far back as the early 1970’s (when I first came to the Bay Area). There’s a mini-museum there stocked with exhibits and artifacts on cable car history and technology, and a mezzanine overlooking the machinery that drives the cables (photo). There’s a few steps down to a small underground chamber with a little window where you can see one of the cables coming out of the barn and going into the channel beneath the street.
The lines running from downtown to Fisherman’s Wharf pass right by it, so riders and get off for a visit. Just one short block away, these lines also pass by the world-infamous “Crookedest Street In The World”, which is just one block of Lombard Street. (Note that elsewhere, the same Lombard Street is a major commercial thoroughfare.) I recommend walking down that block of Lombard rather than trying to drive it. It’s kept very nicely landscaped. It’s also very steep.