Ok the photos are cool and it's nice to see the vintage street cars. But Muni has a budget shortfall and is planning on cutting a bunch of bus lines and reducing frequency on lines across the system. Meanwhile, it has an internal supply chain to custom build replacement parts for vintage vehicles that no other city will operate, and teams of specialist restorers. Viewed in isolation, they look cool! Viewed in context, is this ... irresponsible?
looks like the one time cost for doing a renovation is around $1m per car, and are funded by spot grants rather than the general budget. I was unable to find the overhead involved in ongoing maintenance, but it looks like killing the F line is already on the table.
Note that Muni cannot legally reduce cable car service; the city charter[1] mandates a minimum level of service, due to a 1947 ballot proposition[2]. As your link notes:
> Cable cars are a symbol of San Francisco, a major tourist attraction, and an indelible feature of the city’s cultural and historical landscape. [...] While SPUR doesn’t recommend changing SFMTA’s role in cable car operations, the agency may wish to explore options to generate additional revenue from the cable car system or seek supplemental support from the city’s budget, given the outsized expense of providing cable car service and the unique value this mode brings to the city as a cultural attraction. SFMTA already acknowledges the special status of cable cars by pricing them differently from other modes and by excluding cable car service from some of its passes and fare discount programs.
Apart from that, I suspect the per-service-hour figure is particularly misleading for cable cars and removing one cable car from the schedule would free up significantly less than $871: there is a significant fixed overhead (from power usage and cable wear) to having the system running at all, regardless of how many cars are on it.
> there is a significant fixed overhead (from power usage and cable wear) to having the system running at all, regardless of how many cars are on it.
Each cable car trip costs Muni about US$20. They charge about $8.
I was amazed when I first found out how the grip worked. I figured they clamped pulleys around the cables and then applied brakes to the pulley system. Nah. It's brutally simple. They squeeze two soft metal plates around the cable. The cable wears a groove in the plates during starting and stopping. Those plates are replaced every 3-4 days. The cables are replaced every few months.
Plus the thousand or so pulleys under the street need regular attention. The whole system has way too many friction points, which means intensive maintenance.
The PCC streetcars were a really good design, built for efficient operation with modest maintenance.
Their successor in San Francisco was built by Boeing Vertol, which totally botched it.[1] None of those cars are still around. The PCC cars roll on.
abeppu · · focus · HN ↗
convolvatron · · focus · HN ↗
abeppu · · focus · HN ↗
At 2024 numbers in this SPUR report:
Cable car 872 streetcare 631 lightrail 412 system avg 327 motorbus 302 trolleybus 281
So canceling each cable car could IIUC, allow the system to add roughly 3 electric buses.
<a href="https://www.spur.org/sites/default/files/2026-03/SPUR_Taking_Muni%E2%80%99s_Vitals.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.spur.org/sites/default/files/2026-03/SPUR_Taking...
wolfgang42 · · focus · HN ↗
> Cable cars are a symbol of San Francisco, a major tourist attraction, and an indelible feature of the city’s cultural and historical landscape. [...] While SPUR doesn’t recommend changing SFMTA’s role in cable car operations, the agency may wish to explore options to generate additional revenue from the cable car system or seek supplemental support from the city’s budget, given the outsized expense of providing cable car service and the unique value this mode brings to the city as a cultural attraction. SFMTA already acknowledges the special status of cable cars by pricing them differently from other modes and by excluding cable car service from some of its passes and fare discount programs.
Apart from that, I suspect the per-service-hour figure is particularly misleading for cable cars and removing one cable car from the schedule would free up significantly less than $871: there is a significant fixed overhead (from power usage and cable wear) to having the system running at all, regardless of how many cars are on it.
1: <a href="https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/san_francisco/latest/sf_charter/0-0-0-776" rel="nofollow">https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/san_francisco/latest/s... 2: <a href="https://www.cablecarmuseum.org/60th_Anniversay.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.cablecarmuseum.org/60th_Anniversay.html
Animats · · focus · HN ↗
Each cable car trip costs Muni about US$20. They charge about $8.
I was amazed when I first found out how the grip worked. I figured they clamped pulleys around the cables and then applied brakes to the pulley system. Nah. It's brutally simple. They squeeze two soft metal plates around the cable. The cable wears a groove in the plates during starting and stopping. Those plates are replaced every 3-4 days. The cables are replaced every few months.
Plus the thousand or so pulleys under the street need regular attention. The whole system has way too many friction points, which means intensive maintenance.
The PCC streetcars were a really good design, built for efficient operation with modest maintenance. Their successor in San Francisco was built by Boeing Vertol, which totally botched it.[1] None of those cars are still around. The PCC cars roll on.
[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Standard_Light_Rail_Vehicle" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Standard_Light_Rail_Vehicle