The F Market & Wharves line is one of several light rail lines in San Francisco, California. Unlike most other lines in the system, the F line runs as a heritage streetcar service, almost exclusively using historic equipment from San Francisco's retired fleet and from cities around the world (although buses are added during peak commute hours). While the F line is operated by the San Francisco Municipal Railway (Muni), its operation is supported by Market Street Railway, a nonprofit organization of streetcar enthusiasts which raises funds and helps to restore vintage streetcars.
Introduced as the F Market in 1983, in the first San Francisco Historic Trolley Festival, the service originally operated between the Castro District and the Transbay Terminal, continuing to do so after being launched as a full-time, year-round service in 1995. In March 2000, it was extended at its eastern end to the Embarcadero and northwards along that street to Fisherman's Wharf, and a short section of the route between Market Street and the Transbay Terminal was discontinued.
Despite its heritage status, the F Market & Wharves line is an integral part of Muni's intermodal urban transport network, operating at frequent intervals for 20 hours a day, seven days a week. It carries local commuters and tourists alike, linking residential, business and leisure oriented areas of the city. Unlike the San Francisco cable car system, the cheaper standard Muni fare system applies.
History
Previous F-Line
Cable car operations along Market Street began in 1888. Service was electrified in 1906. To provide a more regular alternative tourist attraction during this period, the San Francisco Historic Trolley Festivals began in 1983. with a parade of PCC cars, painted to represent some of the two dozen North American cities that this type of streetcar once served. Ridership exceeded expectations and the 8-Market trolleybus route that it had mostly replaced was completely discontinued on December29, 1995. and historic streetcar service along The Embarcadero was first provided during the 1987 Trolley Festival, using existing Belt Railroad tracks on The Embarcadero and towed diesel generators to provide power.
With the freeway demolished, the waterfront started to be redeveloped for leisure and tourist activities, similar to Fisherman's Wharf and Pier 39 at the northern end of the waterfront. To support this redevelopment, it was decided to rebuild the Embarcadero as a tree-lined boulevard with streetcar tracks in the median. The section north of Market Street was to be served by an extension of the F line. Tracks were extended on the northern end of Market to connect with the Embarcadero tracks. On March4, 2000, service on the F line began operating along the new extension to Fisherman's Wharf, replacing bus route 32. Service on the short section of the F line between Market Street and the Transbay Terminal was discontinued at that time. with track removal beginning soon afterwards.
A month after the opening of the extension, Muni dedicated a car to Herb Caen, the noted columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle perhaps most famous for coining the phrase Baghdad by the Bay to describe The City. The car, Streetcar No.130, which was originally delivered in 1914, contains wood paneling and is decorated with many quotes from Caen.
Service was suspended in March 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. It resumed on May15, 2021, with limited hours; full hours resumed on June26. Additional weekend afternoon short turn service between Fisherman's Wharf and the Ferry Building, operated by buses rather than streetcars, was added effective June10, 2023.
Better Market Street
The Better Market Street project, a streetscape project launched in the late 2000s to improve Market Street, has a transit component that aims to improve the operations of the F Line. The project would consolidate and eliminate some stops on Market Street and would also construct a new turn-around loop for the F Line at McAllister and 7th Streets. The loop would allow increased service between Fisherman's Wharf and the Civic Center area, which is the section of the line with the highest ridership. Average headways under the service improvement would be 5 minutes instead of the current 7.5-minute scheduled headways.
In 2022, the city was forced to return a $15-million federal grant when it was revealed that they did not expect any construction of the loop to begin before the federally-mandated deadline of September 2025. Construction was shelved indefinitely.
Proposed extension
thumb|The abandoned railway tunnel under Fort Mason would be part of a planned extension
Muni completed a technical feasibility study to extend the F-Line from the vicinity of the existing Jones Street terminal with the assistance of the National Park Service in December 2004. The extended line would extend westward alongside the San Francisco Maritime Museum and Aquatic Park and then through the historic (1914) but disused single-track Fort Mason Tunnel, formerly owned by the State Belt Railroad.
An Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the extension, again led by the National Park Service, commenced in May 2006, resulting in:
- a draft conceptual engineering report, issued in January 2009
- a proposed transit operations plan, issued in July 2009
- a draft EIS, issued in March 2011
- the Final EIS, issued in February 2012
The final document classified areas west of the Fort Mason Tunnel as having "inadequate regional transit access...limited transportation options for transit-dependent residents...[and] infrastructure constraints impacting effectiveness and operations of Fort Mason Center." The Final EIS named a double-tracked extension along Beach Street, a jog north to Aquatic Park, then across Van Ness Avenue to single-tracked service through a retrofitted Fort Mason Tunnel and to a terminus in the Fort Mason Center parking lot as the "preferred alternative".
The line is principally operated by a mixture of the PCC and Peter Witt cars, although other more unusual or historic cars are often in service (including the 913 and 952, iconic streetcars named Desire since they are from New Orleans). The modern LRVs used by Muni Metro cannot be used on F Market & Wharves tracks because the overhead line is not compatible with pantograph operation (though the older streetcars can operate on most surface sections of the Muni Metro system).
PCC fleet
thumb|Three streetcars – original Muni #1010, ex-Newark #1073, and ex-SEPTA #1059 – on Jefferson Street
A fleet of PCC streetcars from San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Newark, built between 1946 and 1948, operate on the line. , MUNI was operating 27 of these cars, restored to various states of service. Among the restored cars in service, three are original San Francisco double-ended PCC cars. Another 16 cars are single-ended cars acquired from SEPTA in Philadelphia in 1992 (which continues to operate another 18 cars today, retrofitted for ADA compliance), while the remaining 11 cars are single-ended cars acquired from New Jersey Transit in Newark in 2002 (built originally for Minneapolis-St. Paul and acquired from that system in 1953). The unrestored cars include five additional San Francisco double-ended cars, 10 San Francisco single-ended cars, 12 single-ended cars acquired from St. Louis in 1957, two single-ended cars from Philadelphia, and two single-ended cars from Pittsburgh. A further previously restored car from Philadelphia was written off after a traffic accident in 2003.
Many of the restored cars are painted in the color schemes of prominent past and present PCC streetcar operators, including Muni itself and other transit systems.
Most of San Francisco's Peter Witt cars are currently painted in the overall orange color scheme that they carried in Milan, although one has been repainted into its original livery of yellow and white with black trim, while another is in the two-tone green livery that the cars carried from the 1930s to the 1970s.
The cars carry a variety of former San Francisco streetcar color schemes.