Cable Cars: Faster than traveling by burro.

I found this old cable car ticket stub that I still had from a trip to San Francisco in the late ’90s. I used it as bookmark for a while, and it’s been sitting in a desk drawer ever since. I don’t remember what a fare cost in those days and there’s no price listed on the stub. On the ticket’s reverse side, there’s some text entitled “Cable Car Facts.” An excerpt:

“Invented in San Francisco, the cable cars have been operating here since Andrew Hallidie first ran his creation down the Clay Street Hill in 1873.

Once a form of transportation used in cities around the world, the San Francisco cable cars are the last in daily revenue service. They were made a National Historic Landmark in 1964.

The cable cars travel a sturdy 9 1/2 miles per hour when they grip the steel cable that runs beneath the street.

Double ended cable cars run only on California Street and the smaller single-ended cars run on the Powell-Mason and Powell-Hyde lines.

The cable car barn at Washington and Mason houses the cable car museum and the machinery that moves the cable.”

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