looks like the one time cost for doing a renovation is around $1m per car, and are funded by spot grants rather than the general budget. I was unable to find the overhead involved in ongoing maintenance, but it looks like killing the F line is already on the table.
Apparently the cable cars have by far the highest cost to operate per hour anyway.
At 2024 numbers in this SPUR report:
Cable car 872 streetcare 631 lightrail 412 system avg 327 motorbus 302 trolleybus 281
So canceling each cable car could IIUC, allow the system to add roughly 3 electric buses.
https://www.spur.org/sites/default/files/2026-03/SPUR_Taking...
Note that Muni cannot legally reduce cable car service; the city charter[1] mandates a minimum level of service, due to a 1947 ballot proposition[2]. As your link notes:
> Cable cars are a symbol of San Francisco, a major tourist attraction, and an indelible feature of the city’s cultural and historical landscape. [...] While SPUR doesn’t recommend changing SFMTA’s role in cable car operations, the agency may wish to explore options to generate additional revenue from the cable car system or seek supplemental support from the city’s budget, given the outsized expense of providing cable car service and the unique value this mode brings to the city as a cultural attraction. SFMTA already acknowledges the special status of cable cars by pricing them differently from other modes and by excluding cable car service from some of its passes and fare discount programs.
Apart from that, I suspect the per-service-hour figure is particularly misleading for cable cars and removing one cable car from the schedule would free up significantly less than $871: there is a significant fixed overhead (from power usage and cable wear) to having the system running at all, regardless of how many cars are on it.
1: https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/san_francisco/latest/s... 2: https://www.cablecarmuseum.org/60th_Anniversay.html
How about the reducing the F, which for a decent portion of its route down Market is directly above the underground KLM lines? The F is slower and lower capacity per car and stops at lights (and stops traffic when it needs to turn) in addition to apparently being more costly to run. I am clearly not a transit planner or traffic engineer, but it seems perfectly reasonable to run the F only from the Ferry Building to Fishermen's Wharf.
- People who want to go up market can transfer to the KLM at Embarcadero and if they're going to Castro (or maybe Church?) they may also get there faster.
- If tourists want to see an old-timey street car, they could ride one perhaps half the distance, only along the water with views Coit tower, and the eastern end of the line would be right by the Railway Museum anyway. And we could run perhaps half as many cars.