The Streetcars of San Francisco

The wonderful Where the Streetcars Used to Go now includes an interactive map of the historical streetcar network in the East Bay. Where the Streetcars Used to go is a fascinating map visualizing the San Francisco streetcar transit network as it existed in 1941 & 1956 and as it exists today. It now includes the tram lines that were once operated by the Key System company in Berkeley and Oakland.

If you like streetcars then it is a bit depressing switching between the Oakland streetcar network maps of 1941 and 2020. However you can cheer yourself up a little by browsing through the vintage photos of the old streetcars of San Francisco and the East Bay. You can actually filter these wonderful photos of San Francisco's historical streetcars by the different streetcar routes. If you click on a streetcar route on the map the photos, running along the bottom of the map, are filtered to only show photos taken along the chosen line. The name of the selected route is also displayed on the map alongside the dates when the route was operational.


You can cheer yourself up even further by exploring the BC Electric Railway Map. This beautiful looking visualization maps how Vancouver's BC Electric Railway Company transit network looked in the early Twentieth Century. The map plots the historical interurban and streetcar lines of the network between 1890 to 1958.

The map also contains a few photos and Street Views of modern day Vancouver showing how some of the company's historical buildings and lines look today. To view this content click on the 'Introduction' button and then on the markers that appear on the map.