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The bridge was brightly painted, using red oxide for the towers and the heavier compression members and an ivory color for the lighter tension members. The bridge was originally painted in a three color scheme, documented in black and white photography, with specific shades unknown.
Ilchester, MD - Built in 1869 in Ilchester Maryland for the B & O Railroad to replace the stone Patterson Viaduct which was destroyed by flood in 1868.
The cable cars are separate from San Francisco's heritage streetcars, which operate on Market Street and the Embarcadero, as well as from the more modern Muni Metro light rail system.
Service was suspended in March 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. , service on the Powell–Hyde line is expected to resume in fall 2021.
In 1869, Andrew Smith Hallidie had the idea for a cable car system in San Francisco, reportedly after witnessing an accident in which a streetcar drawn by horses over wet cobblestones slid backwards, killing the horses.
The first successful cable-operated street running train was the Clay Street Hill Railroad, which opened on August 2, 1873. The promoter of the line was Hallidie, and the engineer was William Eppelsheimer. The line involved the use of grip cars, which carried the grip that engaged with the cable, towing trailer cars; t...
The line started regular service on September 1, 1873, and its success led it to become the template for other cable car transit systems. It was a financial success, and Hallidie's patents were enforced on other cable car promoters, making him wealthy.
Accounts differ as to the precise degree of Hallidie's involvement in the inception of the line, and to the exact date on which it first ran.
The next cable car line to open was the Sutter Street Railway, which converted from horse operation in 1877. This line introduced the side grip, and lever operation, both designed by Henry Casebolt and his assistant Asa Hovey, and patented by Casebolt. This idea came about because Casebolt did not want to pay Hallidie ...
In 1878, Leland Stanford opened his California Street Cable Railroad (Cal Cable). This company's first line was on California Street, and is the oldest cable car line still in operation. In 1880, the Geary Street, Park & Ocean Railway began operation. The Presidio and Ferries Railway followed two years later, and was t...
In 1883, the Market Street Cable Railway opened its first line. This company was controlled by the Southern Pacific Railroad and would grow to become San Francisco's largest cable car operator. At its peak, it operated five lines, all of which converged on Market Street to a common terminus at the Ferry Building. Durin...
In 1888, the Ferries and Cliff House Railway opened its initial two-line system. The Powell–Mason line is still operated on the same route today; their other route was the Powell–Washington–Jackson line, stretches of which are used by today's Powell–Hyde line. The Ferries & Cliff House Railway was also responsible for ...
In 1889, the Omnibus Railroad and Cable Company became the last new cable car operator in San Francisco. The following year the California Street Cable Railroad opened two new lines, these being the last entirely new cable car lines built in the city. One of them was the O'Farrell–Jones–Hyde line, the Hyde section of w...
In all, twenty-three lines were established between 1873 and 1890.
The first electric streetcars in San Francisco began operation in 1892 under the auspices of the San Francisco and San Mateo Electric Railway. At that time, it was estimated that it cost twice as much to build and six times as much to operate a line with cable cars as with electric streetcars.
By the beginning of 1906 many of San Francisco's remaining cable cars were under the control of the United Railroads of San Francisco (URR), although Cal Cable and the Geary Street Company remained independent. URR was pressing to convert many of its cable lines to overhead electric traction, but this was met with resi...
Those objections disappeared after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. The quake and resulting fire destroyed the power houses and car barns of both the Cal Cable and the URR's Powell Street lines, together with the 117 cable cars stored within them. The subsequent race to rebuild the city allowed the URR to replace mos...
By 1912, only eight cable car lines remained, all with steep gradients impassable to electric streetcars. In the 1920s and 1930s, these remaining lines came under pressure from the much improved buses of the era, which could now climb steeper hills than the electric streetcar. By 1944, the only cable cars remaining wer...
In 1947, Mayor Roger Lapham proposed the closure of the two municipally owned lines. In response, a joint meeting of 27 women's civic groups, led by Friedel Klussmann, formed the "Citizens' Committee to Save the Cable Cars". In a famous battle of wills, the citizens' committee eventually forced a referendum on an amend...
In 1951, the three Cal Cable lines were shut down when the company was unable to afford insurance. The city purchased and reopened the lines in 1952, but the amendment to the city charter did not protect them, and the city proceeded with plans to replace them with buses. Again Klussmann came to the rescue, but with les...
This solution required some rebuilding to convert the Hyde Street trackage and terminus to operation by the single-ended cars of the Powell line, and also to allow the whole system to be operated from a single car barn and power house. Much of the infrastructure remained unchanged from the time of the earthquake.
Since 1984, Muni has continued to upgrade the system. Work has included rebuilding of another historical car, the building of nine brand new replacement cars, the building of a new terminal and turntable at the Hyde and Beach terminus, and a new turntable at the Powell and Market terminus.
The cable cars are principally used by tourists rather than commuters. The system serves an area of the city that is already served by a large number of buses and trolleybuses. The two lines on Powell Street (Powell–Hyde and Powell–Mason) both serve only residential and tourist/shopping districts (Union Square, Chinato...
In 2006, then-Mayor Gavin Newsom reported that he had observed several conductors pocketing cash fares from riders without receipt. The following year, the San Francisco auditor's office reported that the city was not receiving the expected revenue from cable cars, with an estimated 40% of cable car riders riding for f...
Among U.S. mass transportation systems the cable cars have the most accidents per year and per vehicle mile, with 126 accidents and 151 injuries reported in the 10 years ending 2013. In the three years ending 2013 the city paid some $8 million to settle four dozen cable car accident claims.
The system was shut down in March 2020 to protect operators during the COVID-19 pandemic, as cable cars do not offer a compartment separating them from passengers (unlike Muni buses, which kept running). , service on the Powell–Hyde line is expected to resume in fall 2021.
There are four separate cables: one length and one length for the Hyde and Mason segments, a length for their common Powell section, and one length for the California Street line.
Apart from the cable itself (which exerts a braking force when going downhill), the cable cars use three separate braking systems:
The current cable car network consists of three routes. The Powell–Hyde and Powell–Mason lines use "single-ended" cars, which must be looped or turned around like a bus at the end of the line; the single-ended cable cars use manual non-powered turntables to rotate the car. There are three street turntables to do this, ...
There is also a set of non-revenue tracks from the California Street line along Hyde Street to join the Powell–Hyde line at Hyde and Washington. This connection exists to enable California Street cars to reach the car barn.
A small signal tower controls the crossing of the lines at the intersection of California Street and Powell Street. It has been rebuilt in 1907, 1937, 1967, and 2020–2021.
The system generally starts operating at 5:32am each day and shuts down at 1:30am.
The cable car system connects at both its terminals on Market Street with the F Market heritage streetcar line. The Taylor and Bay terminal, and the Hyde and Beach terminal, are both short walks from the F Market line. The system connects with other MUNI lines and BART at the Powell & Market and California & Drumm term...
As of January 1, 2020, riding a cable car costs $8 for a single ride, except for seniors riding before 7am or after 9pm when the senior fare is $4. $8 Cable Car Souvenir Tickets are sold in advance and include a San Francisco souvenir as well as a single ride. Beside these single ride tickets, cable car rides are inclu...
In budget year 2012, sales of $6 Cable Car Souvenir Tickets totaled $4,125,386. $6 single rider tickets sold by the cable car conductors totaled $9,888,001. Based on both tickets only, daily ridership of the cable car system was more than 6400. By 2017, the San Francisco Chronicle described the cable cars as a "cash co...
There are 27 cars in rotation when the system is operating. They come in two kinds:
Both types of car ride on a pair of four-wheel trucks, to fit the track's narrow gauge. The term "California Street car", as in a car running on the California Street line, should not be confused with the term "California Car". The latter term applies to all the cable cars currently operating in San Francisco, and is a...
There are 28 single-ended cars available for operation on the Powell lines and 12 double-ended cars on the California Street line. The cable cars are occasionally replaced with new or restored cars, with the old cars being moved to storage for later restoration. There are two cable cars in storage in the cable car muse...
The cable-car barn is located between Washington and Jackson Streets just uphill of where Mason Street crosses them. Cars reverse into the barn off Jackson Street and run out into Washington Street, coasting downhill for both moves. To ensure that single-ended cars leave facing in the correct direction, the car barn co...
As of 2018, the cable-car barn was staffed with 17 mechanics, six custodians, three carpenters, two painters, two supervisors and one superintendent.
The car barn is situated directly above the power house and the Cable Car Museum. The museum's entrance is at Washington and Mason. It contains several examples of old cable cars, together with smaller exhibits and a shop. Two galleries allow the visitor to overlook the main power house, and also to descend below the j...
The car is driven by the "grip", whose job requires strength, coordination, and balance. The grip must smoothly grip and release the cable, know the points at which the grip must be released to coast over intersecting lines or places where the cable does not follow the tracks, and maintain clearance from other traffic....
On the second or third Thursday each July, a cable car bell-ringing contest is held in Union Square between cable car crews, following a preliminary round held during the second to last or the last week of June. The preliminary round determines which contestants go on to the finals in Union Square, by a process of poin...
Originally, the cables were powered by stationary steam engines. For the initial three cables, the Ferries & Cliff House Railway constructed a three-story structure to house two 450-horsepower coal-burning steam engines. The building was complete with a 185-foot-tall smokestack to vent away the heavy black smoke create...
Electric energy started to come in by 1912, when a 600-horsepower General Electric motor came on-line. By 1926, all steam operation of the cable ended when a second complete electrical drive was installed, a 750-horsepower General Electric product. With reduction in the number of cable car lines, the single 750-horsepo...
After the 1984 reconstruction, each of the four cables for the three lines (California, Hyde, Mason and Powell) is separately powered by its own 510-hp electric motor.
The Brooklyn Bridge is a hybrid cable-stayed/suspension bridge in New York City, spanning the East River between Manhattan Island and Brooklyn on Long Island. Opened on May 24, 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge was the first fixed crossing of the East River. It was also the longest suspension bridge in the world at the time of...
The Brooklyn Bridge is the southernmost of four toll-free vehicular bridges connecting Manhattan Island and Long Island, with the Manhattan, Williamsburg, and Queensboro bridges to the north. Only passenger vehicles and pedestrian and bicycle traffic are permitted. A major tourist attraction since its opening, the Broo...
The Brooklyn Bridge, an early example of a steel-wire suspension bridge, uses a hybrid cable-stayed/suspension bridge design, with both horizontal and diagonal suspender cables. Its stone towers are neo-Gothic, with characteristic pointed arches. The New York City Department of Transportation (NYCDOT), which maintains ...
To provide sufficient clearance for shipping in the East River, the Brooklyn Bridge incorporates long approach viaducts on either end to raise it from low ground on both shores. Including approaches, the Brooklyn Bridge is a total of long when measured between the curbs at Park Row in Manhattan and Sands Street in Broo...
The main span between the two suspension towers is long and wide. The bridge "elongates and contracts between the extremes of temperature from 14 to 16 inches". Navigational clearance is above mean high water (MHW). A 1909 "Engineering Magazine" article said that, at the center of the span, the height above MHW could f...
The side spans, between each suspension tower and each side's suspension anchorages, are long. At the time of construction, engineers had not yet discovered the aerodynamics of bridge construction, and bridge designs were not tested in wind tunnels. It was coincidental that the open truss structure supporting the deck ...
The main span and side spans are supported by a structure containing six trusses running parallel to the roadway, each of which is deep. The trusses allow the Brooklyn Bridge to hold a total load of , a design consideration from when it originally carried heavier elevated trains. These trusses are held up by suspender ...
An elevated pedestrian and cycling promenade runs in between the two roadways and above them. It typically runs below the level of the crossbeams, except at the areas surrounding each tower. Here, the promenade rises to just above the level of the crossbeams, connecting to a balcony that slightly overhangs the two road...
Each of the side spans is reached by an approach ramp. The approach ramp from the Brooklyn side is shorter than the approach ramp from the Manhattan side. The approaches are supported by Renaissance-style arches made of masonry; the arch openings themselves were filled with brick walls, with small windows within. The a...
Underneath the Manhattan approach, a series of brick slopes or "banks" was developed into a skate park, the Brooklyn Banks, in the late 1980s. The park uses the approach's support pillars as obstacles. In the mid-2010s, the Brooklyn Banks were closed to the public because the area was being used as a storage site durin...
The Brooklyn Bridge contains four main cables, which descend from the tops of the suspension towers and help support the deck. Two are located to the outside of the bridge's roadways, while two are in the median of the roadways. Each main cable measures in diameter and contains 5,282 parallel, galvanized steel wires wr...
In addition, 1,520 galvanized steel wire suspender cables hang downward from the main cables, and another 400 cable stays extend diagonally from the towers. These wires hold up the truss structure around the bridge deck.
Each side of the bridge contains an anchorage for the main cables. The anchorages are trapezoidal limestone structures located slightly inland of the shore, measuring at the base and at the top. Each anchorage weighs . The Manhattan anchorage rests on a foundation of bedrock while the Brooklyn anchorage rests on clay.
The anchorages both have four anchor plates, one for each of the main cables, which are located near ground level and parallel to the ground. The anchor plates measure , with a thickness of and weigh each. Each anchor plate is connected to the respective main cable by two sets of nine eyebars, each of which is about lo...
The bridge's two suspension towers are tall with a footprint of at the high water line. They are built of limestone, granite, and Rosendale cement. The limestone was quarried at the Clark Quarry in Essex County, New York. The granite blocks were quarried and shaped on Vinalhaven Island, Maine, under a contract with the...
Each tower contains a pair of Gothic Revival pointed arches, through which the roadways run. The arch openings are tall and wide. The tops of the towers are located above the floor of each arch opening, while the floors of the openings are above mean water level, giving the towers a total height of above mean high wate...
The Brooklyn side's caisson, which was built first, originally had a height of and a ceiling composed of five layers of timber, each layer tall. Ten more layers of timber were later added atop the ceiling, and the entire caisson was wrapped in tin and wood for further protection against flooding. The thickness of the c...
The caisson on the Manhattan side was slightly different because it had to be installed at a greater depth. To protect against the increased air pressure at that depth, the Manhattan caisson had 22 layers of timber on its roof, seven more than its Brooklyn counterpart had. The Manhattan caisson also had fifty -diameter...
Washington Roebling himself suffered a paralyzing injury as a result of caisson disease shortly after ground was broken for the Brooklyn tower foundation. His debilitating condition left him unable to supervise the construction in person, so he designed the caissons and other equipment from his apartment, directing "th...
After the caissons were completed, piers were constructed on top of each of them upon which masonry towers would be built. The towers' construction was a complex process that took four years. Since the masonry blocks were heavy, the builders transported them to the base of the towers using a pulley system with a contin...
In 1875, while the towers were being constructed, the project had depleted its original $5 million budget. Two bridge commissioners, one each from Brooklyn and Manhattan, petitioned New York state lawmakers to allot another $8 million for construction. Ultimately, the legislators passed a law authorizing the allotment ...
Work proceeded concurrently on the anchorages on each side. The Brooklyn anchorage broke ground in January 1873 and was subsequently substantially completed in August 1875. The Manhattan anchorage was built in less time, having started in May 1875, it was mostly completed in July 1876. The anchorages could not be fully...
By December 1876, a steel contract for the permanent cables still had not been awarded. There was disagreement over whether the bridge's cables should use the as-yet-untested Bessemer steel or the well-proven crucible steel. Until a permanent contract was awarded, the builders ordered of wire in the interim, 10 tons ea...
Further complicating the situation, Washington Roebling had failed to appear at the trustees' meeting in June 1882, since he had gone to Newport, Rhode Island. After the news media discovered this, most of the newspapers called for Roebling to be fired as chief engineer, except for the "Daily State Gazette" of Trenton,...
Construction on the bridge itself was noted in formal reports that Murphy presented each month to the mayors of New York and Brooklyn. For example, Murphy's report in August 1882 noted that the month's progress included 114 intermediate cords erected within a week, as well as 72 diagonal stays, 60 posts, and numerous f...
There was substantial opposition to the bridge's construction from shipbuilders and merchants located to the north, who argued that the bridge would not provide sufficient clearance underneath for ships. In May 1876, these groups, led by Abraham Miller, filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Southe...
In 1879, an Assembly Sub-Committee on Commerce and Navigation began an investigation into the Brooklyn Bridge. A seaman who had been hired to determine the height of the span, testified to the committee about the difficulties that ship masters would experience in bringing their ships under the bridge when it was comple...
The New York and Brooklyn Bridge was opened for use on May 24, 1883. Thousands of people attended the opening ceremony, and many ships were present in the East River for the occasion. Officially, Emily Warren Roebling was the first to cross the bridge. The bridge opening was also attended by U.S. president Chester A. A...
Though Washington Roebling was unable to attend the ceremony (and rarely visited the site again), he held a celebratory banquet at his house on the day of the bridge opening. Further festivity included the performance by a band, gunfire from ships, and a fireworks display. On that first day, a total of 1,800 vehicles a...
The bridge had cost in 1883 dollars (about US$ in ) to build, of which Brooklyn paid two-thirds. The bonds to fund the construction would not be paid off until 1956. An estimated 27 men died during its construction. Since the New York and Brooklyn Bridge was the only bridge across the East River at that time, it was al...
By 1890, due to the popularity of the Brooklyn Bridge, there were proposals to construct other bridges across the East River between Manhattan and Long Island. Although a second deck for the Brooklyn Bridge was proposed, it was thought to be infeasible because doing so would overload the bridge's structural capacity. T...
While the rebuilding of the span was ongoing, a fallout shelter was constructed beneath the Manhattan approach in anticipation of the Cold War. The abandoned space in one of the masonry arches was stocked with emergency survival supplies for a potential nuclear attack by the Soviet Union; these supplies remained in pla...
Simultaneous with the rebuilding of the Brooklyn Bridge, a double-decked viaduct for the BQE was being built through an existing steel overpass of the bridge's Brooklyn approach ramp. The segment of the BQE from Brooklyn Bridge south to Atlantic Avenue opened in June 1954, but the direct ramp from the northbound BQE to...
In August 2016, after the renovation had been completed, the NYCDOT announced that it would conduct a seven-month, $370,000 study to verify if the bridge could support a heavier upper deck that consisted of an expanded bicycle and pedestrian path. , about 10,000 pedestrians and 3,500 cyclists use the pathway on an aver...
Horse-drawn carriages have been allowed to use the Brooklyn Bridge's roadways since its opening. Originally, each of the two roadways carried two lanes of a different direction of traffic. The lanes were relatively narrow at only wide. In 1922, motor vehicles were banned from the bridge, while horse-drawn carriages wer...
Since 1950, the main roadway has carried six lanes of automobile traffic. Because of the roadway's height ( posted) and weight ( posted) restrictions, commercial vehicles and buses are prohibited from using the Brooklyn Bridge. The weight restrictions prohibit heavy passenger vehicles such as pickup trucks and SUVs to ...
On the Brooklyn side, vehicles can enter the bridge from Tillary/Adams Streets to the south, Sands/Pearl Streets to the west, and exit 28B of the eastbound Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. In Manhattan, cars can enter from both the northbound and southbound FDR Drive, as well as Park Row to the west, Chambers/Centre Streets...
Vehicular access to the bridge is provided by a complex series of ramps on both sides of the bridge. There are two entrances to the bridge's pedestrian promenade on either side.
Formerly, rail traffic operated on the Brooklyn Bridge as well. Cable cars and elevated railroads used the bridge until 1944, while trolleys ran until 1950.
The New York and Brooklyn Bridge Railway, a cable car service, began operating on September 25, 1883; it ran on the inner lanes of the bridge, between terminals at the Manhattan and Brooklyn ends. Since Washington Roebling believed that steam locomotives would put excessive loads upon the structure of the Brooklyn Brid...
Following the unification of the cities of New York and Brooklyn in 1898, the New York and Brooklyn Bridge Railway ceased to be a separate entity that June and the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company (BRT) assumed control of the line. The BRT started running through-services of elevated trains, which ran from Park Row Termi...
The BRT did not run any elevated train through services from 1899 to 1901. Due to increased patronage after the opening of the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT)'s first subway line, the Park Row station was rebuilt in 1906. In the early 20th century, there were plans for Brooklyn Bridge elevated trains to run un...
A plan for trolley service across the Brooklyn Bridge was presented in 1895. Two years later, the Brooklyn Bridge trustees agreed to a plan where trolleys could run across the bridge under ten-year contracts. Trolley service, which began in 1898, ran on what are now the two middle lanes of each roadway (shared with oth...
The Brooklyn Bridge has an elevated promenade open to pedestrians and cyclists in the center of the bridge, located above the automobile lanes. The promenade is usually located below the height of the girders, except at the approach ramps leading to each tower's balcony. The path is generally wide, though this is const...
A center line was painted to separate cyclists from pedestrians in 1971, creating one of the city's first dedicated bike lanes. Initially, the northern side of the promenade was used by pedestrians and the southern side by cyclists. In 2000, these were swapped, with cyclists taking the northern side and pedestrians tak...
Pedestrian and bicycle access to the bridge from the Brooklyn side is from either the median of Adams Street at its intersection with Tillary Street or a staircase near Prospect Street between Cadman Plaza East and West. In Manhattan, the pedestrian walkway is accessible from crosswalks at the intersection of the bridg...
While the bridge has always permitted the passage of pedestrians, the promenade facilitates movement when other means of crossing the East River have become unavailable. During transit strikes by the Transport Workers Union in 1980 and 2005, people commuting to work used the bridge; they were joined by Mayors Ed Koch a...
During the 2003 blackouts, many crossing the bridge reported a swaying motion. The higher-than-usual pedestrian load caused this swaying, which was amplified by the tendency of pedestrians to synchronize their footfalls with a sway. Several engineers expressed concern about how this would affect the bridge, although ot...
Other notable feats have taken place on or near the bridge. In 1919, Giorgio Pessi piloted what was then one of the world's largest airplanes, the Caproni Ca.5, under the bridge. In 1993, bridge jumper Thierry Devaux illegally performed eight acrobatic bungee jumps above the East River close to the Brooklyn tower.
On March 1, 1994, Lebanese-born Rashid Baz opened fire on a van carrying members of the Chabad-Lubavitch Orthodox Jewish Movement, striking 16-year-old student Ari Halberstam and three others traveling on the bridge. Halberstam died five days later from his wounds, and Baz was later convicted of murder. He was apparent...
Several potential attacks or disasters have also been averted. In 1979, police disarmed a stick of dynamite placed under the Brooklyn approach, and an artist in Manhattan was later arrested for the act. In 2003, truck driver Iyman Faris was sentenced to about 20 years in prison for providing material support to Al-Qaed...
On October 1, 2011, more than 700 protesters with the Occupy Wall Street movement were arrested while attempting to march across the bridge on the roadway. Protesters disputed the police account of the events and claimed that the arrests were the result of being trapped on the bridge by the NYPD. The majority of the ar...
On July 22, 2014, the two American flags on the flagpoles atop each tower were found to have been replaced by bleached-white American flags. Initially, cannabis activism was suspected as a motive, but on August 12, 2014, two Berlin artists claimed responsibility for hoisting the two white flags, having switched out the...
The 50th-anniversary celebrations on May 24, 1933, included a ceremony featuring an airplane show, ships, and fireworks, as well as a banquet. During the centennial celebrations on May 24, 1983, President Ronald Reagan led a cavalcade of cars across the bridge. A flotilla of ships visited the harbor, officials held par...

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