Get On, Clip In, Fall Off

Cable Cars

San Francisco is like a living transport museum. Beside the famous cable cars it also has a rapid transit system (BART), on-street and underground-running trams plus one line worked entirely by historic tramcars from all over the place (the F line), trolleybuses (that's buses which pick up power from overhead wires), conventional buses and outer-surburban rail (Caltrain).

That's not bad going for a city in a country which is mostly famous for inadequate or plain nonexistent public transport, and it makes me wonder which enlightened transport planners were able to make this incredible diversity happen. Running a fleet of diverse and elderly trams is very difficult - different types of vehicle mean drivers and mechanics have to be trained on multiple types and spares holdings are almost impossible to manage. It's a joy to see so much elderly rolling stock not only still in use, but obviously cared for lovingly. Transport museums are fun places, but it's much more fun to actually see and ride on heritage vehicles in a working environment rather than just looking at various stuffed and mounted examples. It's kind of like the difference between stuffed animals in the Natural History Museum and seeing real ones on a safari.

But back to the cable cars. I finally got to ride on them in the evening once the tourist crowds had died down, from Powell and Market to the other end of the line and Hyde and Beach, then walked to the other Powell line terminus at Mason St for the journey back. I haven't yet tried the California line, which has a different type of rolling stock. (More in the full entry..)

The experience is interesting, and I'd just love to see what the Health and Safety Executive would say if such a system appeared in the UK. Riders standing on the running-boards and hanging onto poles would probably give them a corporate coronary. The cars are pretty small, and because of the conditions imposed by the cable-hauling system have to be manually pushed around on a turntable at the end of the line to point them in the opposite direction.

The traction system is fairly simple - a slotted channel between the running rails hides a cable which is driven at a constant 9.5 miles/hr by a central engine. The only onboard power the cars themselves have is batteries to power their lights, and motive power comes from the cable or from gravity. The gripman (they're not drivers, they're gripmen) controls the car by operating a mechanism that grips the cable by variable amounts to provide traction and by using any of the three braking systems the cars have on board. Brakes are really, really important when gradients as severe as they are in San Francisco - remember that the reason this system was devised was because the hills are simply too steep for conventional tramways.

Firstly, the car has brake shoes which operate on the wheels. Secondly, there are tramway-style track brakes - blocks of softwood which press down on the rail surface. These brakes are responsible for the fantastic smell of overheating wood when the car's descending a steep gradient. Finally, if all else fails there's an emergency slot brake, a stepped wedge made of steel, which is dropped into the cable slot between the rails like an axe-blade. Operating all these systems plus the grip and the bell (which is used with the same regularity as, say, car horns in Naples) is incredibly physical work as the gripman throws himself around the car pulling huge iron levers and stamping on pedals. It's also a very skilled job - being careless with the grip can lead to the gripper mechanism spot-welding itself to the cable (with alarming consequences) and balancing braking on steep downhill gradients to keep the car under control takes skill. Add to that the fact that it's out in the open rather than in a nice warm cab and it's clear that most cable car crews do it because they love the cable cars - they all start out as bus drivers initially, and MUNI doesn't pay them any more for driving cable cars than they do for driving a bus.

It's quite an experience riding on one of these things, and despite the crowds of tourists it's worth having a go. As part of an urban transit system they're more of a tourist attraction than a commuter service, but plenty of people do still use the cable cars to commute. Given the phenomenal hills in the city it's a lot like riding a very genteel roller-coaster, and probably a lot more fun than taking the bus.

There's more about the Cable Cars here.

Posted by mpk at March 30, 2004 4:41 PM | TrackBack