Streetcars and Interurbans
Allie M.
vector art, inkscape
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This map depicts the Bay Area's public transportation network in an alternate reality 2023, which mostly fossilizes the old streetcar systems as they existed in the 1940s. It is to-scale, and cross-referenced with several historical sources and maps, synthesizing the electric traction of the Key System, Market Street Railway, SFMTA, Sacramento Northern, Northwestern Pacific, and Southern Pacific into something coherent and at least a little conceivable in the modern world with only three new rights of way. It isn’t an exercise in creating a better future, but instead a thought experiment reflecting on the past: how far can old-school streetcars really go in an urban environment with severe capacity constraints? How can the capacity of that old infrastructure be improved, without changing its at-grade character? Is there a universe in which street-running interurbans and ferry-train commuter exchanges can be practical? This method of providing transit requires deprioritizing auto traffic -- what kind of society is created by going maximally down this path?
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Creativity is the force that powers learning. My urge to create grounds itself in the reality of local, regional history, it prompts thoughtful consideration of the forces that build the worlds whose essences I seek to capture with lines on a map.
