Interactive maps show where streetcars used to go in San Francisco, Oakland

After mapping San Francisco's old streetcar system in 2016, SF resident Chris Arvin got requests to make a map of the East Bay's old Key System. He published the map, a screenshot of which can be seen here, in early August. less After mapping San Francisco's old streetcar system in 2016, SF resident Chris Arvin got requests to make a map of the East Bay's old Key System. He published the map, a screenshot of which can be seen here, in ... more Photo: Screengrab Via Sfstreetcars.co Photo: Screengrab Via Sfstreetcars.co Image 1 of / 73 Caption Close Interactive maps show where streetcars used to go in San Francisco, Oakland 1 / 73 Back to Gallery

When Chris Arvin moved to San Francisco in 2012, he found the city and region's public transit system "fascinating."

"It's probably because I came from somewhere – New Hampshire – which has almost no public transit at all," Arvin said. "I found public transit to be super intriguing and it sort of makes you more independent."

Then he found a book called "Inside Muni: The Properties and Operations of the Municipal Railway of San Francisco" by John Henry McKane at a used book fair in the Outer Sunset. And what he saw while looking through the book sparked his curiosity about the Bay Area's public transit system.

"It had all these photos of streetcars on streets that I recognized in the city and I had no idea that there were streetcars there in the past," he said. "And so I wanted to learn more about it, see where all the streetcars went and when they went away and how they went away over time.

But I found it hard to find some of the information online in one place."

That led Arvin on a quest to compile information about San Francisco's streetcar system and the East Bay's Key System that resulted in two maps showing where the streetcars used to go, along with archival photos and information about the routes. He created the map showing the SF streetcar routes in 2016 and published a map showing the Key System routes in early August.

Arvin's latest map of the East Bay's Key System has information on over 22 routes and 500 old photos. His map of San Francisco's streetcar system has information on 45 routes and over 2,500 photos. The maps allow users to click on specific lines and see when they opened, whether or not they are still operating, and when they closed if they are defunct.

"At first it was just for my own curiosity," he said. "And then when I put [the SF map] together and found more historical photos, I put it out for everyone to see and got a really great response." After putting out the first map, he started to hear from longtime Bay Area residents and transplants who wanted more information about the streetcar routes and started to get a lot of requests to make a map of the Key System.

So Arvin, who's on the design team for Airbnb during the day, went back to work to charting the Key System's routes in his off time.

"I found it really interesting that trains went on the Bay Bridge," Arvin said. "I think one of the most interesting things about transit between back then and now is the way that we used to prioritize [mass] transit as a mode of transportation.

We used to build all of our infrastructure around it.... The fact that there used to be two lanes dedicated to trains on the Bay Bridge is just crazy to me."

As a newcomer to the San Francisco Bay Area, working on the streetcar maps gave Arvin insight into the broader history of the region beyond where the tracks were laid. "I think that one thing that was fascinating in San Francisco specifically was how much of the transit people happened because of the people," he said, referring to San Francisco becoming the first major U.S. city to have a publicly owned and operated transit system.

But a lot has changed since then, and Arvin's work on the maps helps illuminate what's different – and what's the same – between then and now with the Bay Area's public transit system. "A lot of the routes that were streetcar routes are now very similar bus routes," he said. "Some of them even have the same numbers... I think that's pretty cool."

He said that he was recently reading a San Francisco Chronicle article from July 3, 1948 covering the conversion of the 7 Haight streetcar route into a bus route. The article said the bus would come to the stops every two-and-a-half minutes. "Today, I live right by there and I take the bus and it's about a 12-minute headway," he said. "And to think about that change, it's getting worse over time. That's kind of crazy."

Check out the interactive map of the East Bay's Key System at sfstreetcars.co.