(Editor’s Note: On Dec. 5, MUNI will implement a series of service changes that will significantly reduce or cut back bus, trolley coach and streetcar service on more than half of the system’s routes. Some of those changes include entire cancellations of routes. Some of those routes have been in service for generations. This week, the California Beat offers obituaries for those doomed transit routes that will be eliminated on Dec. 5. It’s a glimpse back at the legacy that the transit line left behind, and how it helped shaped San Francisco to what it looks like today.)

4-Sutter

MUNI Trolley Coach line

Start of Service: June 16, 1935 – Sept. 24, 1949, Aug. 29, 1979 -
End of Service: Dec. 4, 2009

The 4-Sutter trolley coach line originally began service as Market Street Railway streetcar line 4 Sutter-Sacramento, connecting the city’s Downtown core — Market Street — with the area of the city now known as the inner Richmond District.

In 1935, Market Street Railway was the competing privately-owned transit agency that the city’s Municipal Railway competed with. That was the case until 1944, when MSRy ceased operations with many of their routes incorporated into the larger publicly-owned Municipal Railway system.

The 4 Sutter-Sacramento was one of those MSRy routes that became MUNI operated lines.

For four years, two-man streetcars dominated the line that ran east-west on Sutter, Sacramento and Lake Sts. where it jogged south on 6th Ave. to a terminus on Fulton St. near Golden Gate Park.

In 1948, the streetcars were replaced by MUNI motor coaches and was canceled entirely the next year.

In 1979, under MUNI’s plan to reshape the system map, the 4-Sutter was resurrected, this time operating as a trolley coach route that supplemented existing service through the Inner Richmond.

The 4-Sutter would eventually be extended to its current terminus at 6th and Clement Sts. During MUNI’s last round of cutbacks, the 4-Sutter became a peak-hour only route, operating during commute hours Monday through Friday.

On Dec. 4, the route will be discontinued all together, much like it was in 1949.

In the past three decades, the 4-Sutter has steadily provided supplemental service to the Sutter Street corridor. It has alleviated much of the crowding that occurs on the other two routes that serve Sutter and Post Streets — the 2-Clement and 3-Jackson.

Without the 4-Sutter’s contribution on the busy corridor, it remains to be seen just what the overcrowding on those other two lines will look like.

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