Key System
From Free net encyclopedia
←Older revision | Newer revision→
The Key System (or Key Route) was a company that provided mass transit in the cities of Oakland, Berkeley, Emeryville, Piedmont, San Leandro, Richmond, Albany and El Cerrito in the eastern San Francisco Bay Area from the 1900s until 1960 when the system was sold to a newly formed public agency, AC Transit. The Key System consisted of local streetcar and bus lines operating solely in the East Bay and a network of several interurban and intercity bus lines connecting the cities and neighborhoods in the East Bay to San Francisco (before 1939 via a ferry terminal in the middle of the San Francisco Bay). It was the East Bay counterpart of the San Francisco Municipal Railway or "Muni" streetcar system. At its height during the 1940s the Key System had over 66 miles of track that connected the communities of Richmond, Albany, Berkeley, Oakland, and San Leandro to San Francisco.
The local streetcars were discontinued in 1948 and the commuter trains to San Francisco were discontinued in 1958. Much of Key System Railway was purchased in the late 1950s and subsequently dismantled by the National City Lines company. The collaboration of several corporations behind the National City Lines to buy up and dismantle electric rail systems across the U.S. in order to promote their financial interests in internal combustion transportation was an important factor in the demise of the Key System. The other important factor was of course the preference for the private automobile on the part of the American public, starting as early as the late 1910s. The Key System's original territory is today served by BART and AC Transit bus service.
Contents |
History
The system was a consolidation of several smaller streetcar lines assembled in the late 1890s and early 1900s by Francis Marion "Borax" Smith, an entrepreneur who made a fortune in his namesake mineral, and then turned to real estate and electric traction. The Key System began as the "San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose Railway (SFOSJR)", incorporated in 1902. Service began on Oct. 26, 1903 with a 4-car train carrying 250 passengers, departing Downtown Berkeley for the ferry pier. Before the end of the year, the general manager of the SFOSJR came up with the idea of using a stylized map on which the system's routes were laid out on the pattern of an old-fashioned key, with three "handle loops" that covered the East Bay cities of Berkeley, Piedmont (initially, "Claremont" shared the Piedmont loop) and Oakland, and a "shaft" in the form of the Key pier, the "teeth" representing the ferry berths at the end of the pier. The company touted its "key route", which eventually led to the company adopting the name "Key System".
In 1908, the SFOSJR changed its name to the San Francisco, Oakland & San Jose Consolidated Railway. This was again changed to the San Francisco-Oakland Terminal Railway in 1912. This incarnation of the Key system went bankrupt in December of 1923, and was re-organized as the Key System Transit Co., adopting what had begun as a marketing buzzword into the name of the company.
Following the Great Crash of 1929, the name was changed yet again as part of another re-organization. A holding company called the Railway Equipment & Realty Co. was created, with the subsidiary Key System Ltd. running the commuter trains. In 1938, the name became simply, the Key System.
System details
The initial connection across the Bay to San Francisco was through a causeway that extended from Oakland, California westward 16,000 feet (4,900 meters) to a ferry terminal near Treasure Island. This causeway and pier had actually been started by a short-lived narrow gauge railroad company, the California and Nevada Railroad. The Key System operated a system of ferries that made the final short connection to San Francisco. In 1939, a new dual track opened on the lower deck of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge that directly connected the Key System to the then-new Transbay Terminal in San Francisco's downtown.
The later rolling stock consisted of articulated cars in pairs sharing a common central truck and with central passenger entries in each car, a forerunner of the design of most light rail vehicles today. Several of these pairs were connected to make up a train. Power pickup was via pantograph from overhead catenary wires, except on the Bay Bridge where a third rail pickup was used. The Key's trains ran on 600 volt DC current, compared to the 1200 volts used by the SP commuter trains. The cars had an enclosed operator's cab in the right front, with passenger seats extending to the very front of the vehicle, a favorite seat for many children, with dramatic views of the tracks ahead.
The exterior color of the cars was orange and cream white with a pale green stripe at the window level. Interior upholstery was woven reed seat covers in one of the articulated sections, and leather in the other, the smoking section. The flooring was linoleum. During World War II, the roofs were painted gray for aeriel camoflauge. After acquisition by National City Lines, all Key vehicles including the bridge units were re-painted in that company's standard colors, yellow and green.
Dismantlement
The Key System's famed commuter train system was dismantled in 1958 after many years of declining ridership as well as the effort by National City Lines, a General Motors affiliate which had bought up the system in the late 1940s to petition the public utility board to abandon the last rail lines. In 1949, a Federal Court convicted General Motors, Standard Oil of California, Firestone Tire and others of criminally conspiring to replace electric transportation with gasoline or diesel powered buses, and to monopolize the sale of buses and related products to local transit companies throughout the U.S. They were fined $5,000. (see General Motors streetcar conspiracy). State planners anxious to embrace California's postwar love for the automobile also pushed to have the track across the Bay Bridge and street rights of way removed to increase highway and street capacity. The local governments in the East Bay attempted to purchase the Key System in the late 1950s to save the last rail lines to San Francisco however they were unable to buy the system and form AC Transit until 1960 when the system was all-bus. The last run for the Key System's rail system was on April 20, 1958.
Most of the rolling stock was scrapped, and some of the rest sold and shipped off for operation in Buenos Aires, Argentina. A few of the bridge units were salvaged for collections in the United States. Two are at the Western Railway Museum near Rio Vista, California while another is at the Orange Empire Railway Museum in southern California.
Legacy
Signs of the system still remain. The elevated loop at San Francisco's Transbay Transit Terminal still exists, and with some modifications to the original design, is currently used by AC Transit buses to drop off passengers and return to the East Bay as the Key System once did. This will be further modified when the Transbay Terminal is replaced with a new structure scheduled for completion in 2012.
A stretch of road in Albany that was built with a wide median for a planned extension of the G-Westbrae line (but never constructed) is named Key Route Boulevard. The Claremont Hotel, built by a Key System affiliate company, survives as the Claremont Resort.
Transbay Rail Lines
Until the Bay Bridge railway began operation, the Key commuter trains had no letter designation. They were named for the principal street or district they served.
- A - Downtown Oakland (was extended far into East Oakland to near the San Leandro border on the competing Southern Pacific interurban (see East Bay Electric Lines) tracks when they shut down their operations in 1941)
- B - Trestle Glen
- C - Piedmont
- E - Claremont (ran directly to the Claremont Hotel, terminating on a track between the two tennis courts. Today the tennis courts remain in place)
- F - Berkeley / Adeline Street (was also extended on former Southern Pacific interurban tracks on Shattuck beyond University Avenue and through the SP's Northbrae Tunnel, terminating at The Alameda and Solano Avenue)
- G - Westbrae Shuttle (actually, a streetcar shuttle providing a connection at University Avenue with the H transbay train)
- H - Monterey Avenue (originally, the Sacramento Street Line; the original line ran up Hopkins, but was switched to the SP's old tracks up Monterey after 1941)
- K - College Avenue (also a streetcar shuttle providing a connection at Shattuck Avenue with the F transbay train)
- D was reserved for a proposed line into Montclair along the Sacramento Northern Interurban Railway
The A,B,C,E and F lines were the last rail lines operating in the system's final years. Train service ended on April 20, 1958, replaced by buses utilizing the same letter designations. These same letter designations were preserved by A.C. Transit when it took over the Key System, and are still in use; AC Transit's B, C, E and F lines follow more or less the same routes today that the correspondingly designated Key Line routes took.
East Bay Street Railways
The Key System's streetcars operated as a separate division under the name "East Bay Street Railways. Ltd.", later changed to "East Bay Transit Co." The numbering of the streetcar lines changed several times over the years. The Key's streetcars operated out of several carbarns. The Central Carbarn was on the east side of Lake Merritt on Third Avenue. The Western Carbarn was located at 51st and Telegraph Avenue in the Temescal District of Oakland. The Elmhurst Carbarn was located in the east Oakland district of Elmhurst. The Key streetcars were painted green and cream white until they were re-painted in the green and yellow scheme of National City Lines after NCL acquired the Key System. The last Key streetcars ran in 1948.
Related Rail Systems
- The Key System organized its freight business in 1929 as the Key Terminal Railway, Ltd. In 1938, the name was changed to the Oakland Terminal Railroad, Ltd. In 1943 the Oakland Terminal Railroad was jointly purchased by the Western Pacific and the Santa Fe Railway and is now known as the Oakland Terminal Railway(OTR).
- See also the East Bay Electric Lines; another transbay commuter rail system operated by the Southern Pacific in the East Bay until 1941.
- See also the Sacramento Northern Railroad, an interurban system running from Chico through Sacramento to Oakland which also used some of the Key System's trackage as well as the Key System's ferry pier, and later ran to the Transbay Terminal until 1941.
External pictures
- "Key System #182 sitting in the car barn at the Western Railway Museum, Sept. 1990."
- A Key System car in Oakland, 1954.
- An excellent gallery of Key System images
External links
- The Key System presents: The March of Progress (1945 documentary)
- Commercial DVD detailing the history of the system
- Oakland Berkeley & Eastern
References
The Key Route, 2v., Harre Demoro, Interurban Press, 1985.