San Francisco Cable Cars

The driving force behind the San Francisco cable cars system came from a man who witnessed a horrible accident on a typically damp summer day in 1869. Andrew Smith Hallidie saw the toll slippery grades could extract when a horse- drawn streetcar slid backwards under its heavy load. The steep slope with wet cobblestones and a heavily weighted vehicle combined to drag five horses to their deaths. Although such a sight would stun anyone, Hallidie and his partners had the know-how to do something about the problem.

Hallidie had been born in England and moved to the U.S. in 1852. His father filed the first patent in Great Britain for the manufacture of wire- rope. As a young man, Hallidie found uses for this technology in California's Gold Country. He used the wire-rope when designing and building a suspension bridge across Sacramento's American River. He also found another use for the wire-rope when pulling heavy ore cars out of the underground mines on tracks. The technology was in place for pulling cable cars.

The cable car was born in San Francisco at four o'clock in the morning on August 2, 1873, when Andrew Smith Hallidie successfully tested the world's first cable car. Now you can ride the historic Powell Street Cable Car past Lombard Street to Fisherman's Wharf.

Number of Vehicles: 40
Number of Lines: 3
Round-Trip Route Miles: 10.2
Annual Vehicle Revenue Miles: 494,650
Annual Vehicle Revenue Hours: 128,899

Track & Cable:
3' 6" gauge single track - 8.8 miles.

Steepest grades - 21%, Hyde between Bay and Francisco; 18%, California between Grant Ave. and Stockton; 17%, Mason between Union and Green; 17%, Powell between Bush and Pine.

Cables - four cables moving at 9 1/2 mph, each powered by a 510 hp electric motor in the cable car barn, using a total of 3.7 million kwh per year.

Cable diameter - 1 1/4".

Cable length: Powell - 9,300 ft.; Mason - 10,300 ft.; Hyde - 16,000 ft.; California - 21,700; Total - 57,300 ft.