TBT: Awesome vintage video documents fight to save cable cars

It would be hard to imagine a San Francisco without cable cars. But in the early 1950s, the city nearly moved forward with plans to replace the city’s famed trolleys with buses. The fight to save the cable cars was captured in this very cool 1954 news reel that British Pathé recently uploaded to its YouTube channel along with thousands of other videos. Interesting tidbits: cable cars are “no bigger than an automobile,” and can apparently fit 120 people.

Also in the British Pathé collection is a 1946 video showing cable cars, streetcars, and motor coaches speeding around San Francisco and drivers undergoing reaction tests. Sadly, there is no sound.

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h/t: CurbedSF