November 12 is the last day for any fans to take a final ride on one of the light-rail trains that have been running through the streets and tunnels of San Francisco since 1996, as the last of them is finally getting retired.
It's finally time to say arrivederci to the Italian-built light-rail trains that have defined Muni service for more than a generation, with their distinctive silver and red body paint, and vaguely European shape. The Chronicle reports on the swan song of the last Breda LRVs (light-rail vehicles), which have been gradually getting phased out over the last seven years as the completed fleet of newer, Siemens-built train cars were put into service.
We first reported on the arrival of those new trains in mid-2016, so this has been a long time coming. At the time, the Breda LRVs were just 20 years old, and they are about 30, having first arrived in pieces from Italy in 1995, getting final assembly at Pier 80.
Longtime San Franciscans may remember the debacle when the SFMTA learned that the assembled train cars exceeded their promised weight by about 10,000 pounds, which led to unanticipated vibration and maintenance issues. While the agency worked to lower the weight of the cars, their heftiness limited the length of trains and therefore the system's capacity, leading to delays early on.
The Chronicle piece, clearly culled from SFMTA sources, notes that the Breda cars were far more reliable than their predecessors, which had been made by Boeing — but many commuters would likely argue the system went from terrible to merely bad. And, as has been noted many times, Muni service has also suffered due to its antiquated computer train-control system — but we learned last year that the agency is undertaking a ten-year process to upgrade what remains a floppy disk-based system.
"We will miss the Bredas, and they will always be part of San Francisco’s history,” says Julie Kirschbaum, the newly elevated director of the SFMTA, speaking to the Chronicle. "They were there for a lot of firsts."
Those firsts include the first service on the T line and the first service to Oracle Park — then known as Pac Bell Park.
The new Siemens trains are reportedly three to four times more reliable than the Bredas were, and overall satisfaction with Muni is up year over year — with fewer of the sort of systemwide meltdowns that have been more the purview of BART lately.
The full fleet of 219 new Siemens LRV4s is expected to be in service by late 2026, with 164 already in service across the system.
The final Breda train will be out on the J-Church line next Wednesday, November 12, for one final day of service.
Previously: Muni Is Getting A New Fleet Of Train Cars, Starting This Year
