Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
California Street Cable Car
History buffs and crowd-shy visitors prefer the California St line, in operation since 1878.
This divine ride heads west through Chinatown, passing Old St Mary's, and climbs Nob
Hill to Grace Cathedral. The Van Ness terminus is a few blocks northeast of Japantown.
Understand
The Cable Car's Timeless Technology
Legend has it that the idea for cable cars came to Andrew Hallidie in 1869, after he watched a horse carriage
struggle up Jackson St, slip on wet cobblestones and crash downhill. Such accidents were considered inevitable
on steep San Francisco hills, but Hallidie knew better. His father was the Scottish inventor of wire cable, used to
haul ore out of Gold Rush mines. If hemp-and-metal cable could carry rock through Sierras snowstorms, surely it
could transport San Franciscans through fog.
'Wire rope railway' was a name that didn't inspire confidence, and skeptical city planners granted the inventor
just three months to make his contraption operational by August 1, 1873. Hallidie had missed his city deadline by
four hours when his cable car was poised for descent on Jones St. The operator was terrified, and Hallidie is said
to have grabbed the brake and steered the car downhill.
By the 1890s, 53 miles of track crisscrossed San Francisco. Hallidie became rich, and even ran for mayor; de-
famed as an opportunistic Englishman despite his civic contributions and US citizenship, he lost. Hallidie re-
mained a lifelong inventor, earning 300 patents and becoming a pioneering member of the California Academy of
Sciences.
Today the cable car seems more like a steampunk carnival ride than modern transport. Cable cars require burly
gripmen - and one buff gripwoman - to lean hard on hand-operated brakes to keep from careening downhill. The
city receives many applicants for this job, but 80% fail the strenuous tests of upper-body strength and hand-eye
coordination, and rarely try again.
Although cables groan piteously with uphill effort, they seldom fray and have rarely broken in more than a cen-
tury of near-continuous operation. The key to the cable car's amazing safety record is the cable gripwheel, with
clips that click into place and release gradually to prevent cables from slipping. There are newer, faster ways to
get around town, but this Victorian technology remains the killer app to conquer San Francisco's highest hills.
Powell Street Cable Car Turnaround
At Powell and Market Sts, operators slooowly turn Powell-Hyde and Powell-Mason cable
cars around on a revolving wooden platform - cable cars can't go in reverse. Tourists line
up here to secure a seat, with street performers and doomsday preachers for entertainment.
Locals hop on further uphill.
