Whoopty doo, Muni celebrates 100 years in operation today. If you can actually succeed in riding a Metro train or bus to work this a.m. — despite reduced service this week and the NextBus system on the fritz, on top of the usual high odds of a rush-hour meltdown — you'll ride for free. Call it a small thank you after a couple decades of consistent a.m. and p.m. fuck yous.

As the Chron reports, the company that preceeded Muni, United Railroads, was actually even shittier — company managers were indicted in a graft trial following the '06 earthquake, and there were equipment problems, poor service (sound familiar?), and a huge streetcar strike that upset everyone in 1907 — and thus the SF Municipal Railway was founded in order to make the city more navigable. While United Railroads operated streetcars, cable cars, and a horsecar line up Market Street, Muni opened on December 28, 1912 with just one streetcar line that began at Geary and Market and went all the way up Geary out to 10th Avenue and Golden Gate Park.

For what it's worth, it was the first publicly owned transit system in large American city.

100 years later the system still has a lot of flaws, and the engineering of that Metro line may as well have been done by monkeys on moonshine, but it's all we've got. Well, that and Uber, and BART if you live near it, and the occasional surly taxi driver who'll scoff at you if you don't tip him two dollars and probably won't show up anyway.

[Chron]