Key System
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This article is about the defunct San Francisco Bay Area transit system. For the type of telephone system, see Key telephone system.
 The Key System (or Key Route) was a privately owned company which provided mass transit in the cities of Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda[1], Emeryville, Piedmont, San Leandro, Richmond, Albany and El Cerrito in the eastern San Francisco Bay Area from 1903 until 1960 when the system was sold to a newly formed public agency, AC Transit.[citation needed] The Key System consisted of local streetcar and bus lines operating solely in the East Bay, and a network of commuter rail and bus lines connecting cities and neighborhoods in the East Bay to San Francisco by way of a ferry pier extending out into San Francisco Bay, and later, via the lower deck of the Bay Bridge. At its height during the 1940s the Key System had over 66 miles of track that connected the communities of Richmond, Albany, Berkeley, Oakland, and San Leandro with each other and to San Francisco. The local streetcars were discontinued in 1948 and the commuter trains to San Francisco were discontinued in 1958. The Key System's original territory is today served by BART and AC Transit bus service.
BeginningsThe system was a consolidation of several smaller streetcar lines assembled in the late 1890s and early 1900s by Francis Marion "Borax" Smith, an entrepreneur who made a fortune in his namesake mineral, and then turned to real estate and electric traction. The Key System began as the "San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose Railway (SFOSJR)", incorporated in 1902. Service began on October 26, 1903 with a 4-car train carrying 250 passengers, departing downtown Berkeley for the ferry pier. Before the end of that same year, the general manager of the SFOSJR came up with the idea of using a stylized map on which the system's routes were laid out on the pattern of an old-fashioned key, with three "handle loops" that covered the East Bay cities of Berkeley, Piedmont (initially, "Claremont" shared the Piedmont loop) and Oakland, and a "shaft" in the form of the Key pier, the "teeth" representing the ferry berths at the end of the pier. The company touted its "key route", which eventually led to the company adopting the name "Key System". In 1908, the SFOSJR changed its name to the San Francisco, Oakland & San Jose Consolidated Railway. This was again changed to the San Francisco-Oakland Terminal Railway in 1912. This incarnation of the Key system went bankrupt in December of 1923, and was re-organized as the Key System Transit Co., transforming what had begun as a marketing buzzword into the name of the company. Following the Great Crash of 1929, the name was changed yet again as part of another re-organization. A holding company called the Railway Equipment & Realty Co. was created, with the subsidiary Key System Ltd. running the commuter trains. In 1938, the name became simply the Key System. During World War II, the Key System built and operated the Shipyard Railway, a special line running between a transfer station in Emeryville and the Kaiser Shipyards in Richmond. System detailsThe initial connection across the Bay to San Francisco was by ferryboat via a causeway and pier ("mole"), extending from the end of Yerba Buena Avenue in Oakland, California westward 16,000 feet (4,900 meters) across the Bay to a ferry terminal near Yerba Buena Island. Filling for the nascent causeway had actually been started by a short-lived narrow gauge railroad company in the late 1800s, the California and Nevada Railroad. "Borax" Smith acquired the causeway from the California and Nevada upon its bankruptcy. The Key System operated a fleet of ferries between the Key Route Pier [2] and the San Francisco Ferry Building until 1939 when a new dual track opened on the lower deck of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge bringing Key System trains to the then-new Transbay Terminal in San Francisco's downtown. The bridge railway and Transbay Terminal were shared with the Southern Pacific's Interurban Electric and the Sacramento Northern railroads. The Key System's first trains were composed of standard wooden railroad passenger cars, complete with clerestory roofs. Atop each of these, a pair of pantographs, designed and constructed by the Key System's own shops, were installed to collect current from overhead wires to power a pair of electric motors on each car, one on each truck (bogie). The design of the Key's rolling stock changed over the years. Wood gave way to steel, and, instead of doors at each end, center doors were adopted. The later rolling stock consisted of specially-designed "bridge units" for use on the new San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, articulated cars sharing a common central truck and including central passenger entries in each car, a forerunner of the design of most light rail vehicles today. Several of these pairs were connected to make up a train. Power pickup was via pantograph from overhead catenary wires, except on the Bay Bridge where a third rail pickup was used. The Key's trains ran on 600 volt direct current, compared to the 1200 volts used by the SP commuter trains. The cars had an enclosed operator's cab in the right front, with passenger seats extending to the very front of the vehicle, a favorite seat for many children, with dramatic views of the tracks ahead. The exterior color of the cars was orange and cream white with a pale green stripe at the window level. Interior upholstery was woven reed seat covers in one of the articulated sections, and leather in the other, the smoking section. The flooring was linoleum. During World War II, the roofs were painted gray for aerial camouflage. After acquisition by National City Lines, all Key vehicles including the bridge units were re-painted in that company's standard colors, yellow and green. DismantlementThe Key System's famed commuter train system was dismantled in 1958 after many years of declining ridership as well as the effort by National City Lines, a General Motors affiliate which had bought up the system in the late 1940s to petition the public utility board to abandon the last rail lines. In 1949, a Federal Court convicted General Motors, Standard Oil of California, Firestone Tire and others of criminally conspiring to replace electric transportation with gasoline or diesel powered buses, and to monopolize the sale of buses and related products to local transit companies throughout the U.S. They were fined $5,000. State planners anxious to embrace California's postwar love for the automobile also pushed to have the track across the Bay Bridge and street rights of way removed to increase highway and street capacity. Local governments in the East Bay attempted to purchase the Key System, but were unsuccessful. The last run for the Key System's rail system was on April 20, 1958. In 1960, the newly-formed, publicly owned AC Transit took over the Key System's facilities. Most of the rolling stock was scrapped, and some of the rest sold and shipped off for operation in Buenos Aires, Argentina. A few of the bridge units were salvaged for collections in the United States. Two are at the Western Railway Museum near Rio Vista, California while another is at the Orange Empire Railway Museum in southern California. Other propertiesFrom the beginning, the Key System had been conceived as a dual real estate and transportation system. "Borax" Smith and his partner Frank C. Havens first established a company called the "Realty Syndicate" which acquired large tracts of undeveloped land throughout the East Bay. The Realty Syndicate also built two large hotels, each served by a San Francisco-bound train, the Claremont and the Key Route Inn, and a popular amusement park in Oakland called Idora Park. Streetcar lines were also routed to serve all these properties, thereby enhancing their value. In its early years, the Key System was actually a subsidiary of the Realty Syndicate. LegacySigns of the system still remain.
 Transbay Rail LinesUntil the Bay Bridge railway began operation, the Key commuter trains had no letter designation. They were named for the principal street or district they served.
The A, B, C, E and F lines were the last rail lines operating in the system's final years. Train service ended on April 20, 1958, replaced by buses utilizing the same letter designations. These same letter designations were preserved by A.C. Transit when it took over the Key System, and are still in use; AC Transit's B, C, E and F lines follow more or less the same routes today that the correspondingly designated Key routes took. East Bay Street RailwaysThe Key System's streetcars operated as a separate division under the name "Oakland Traction Company", later changed to "East Bay Street Railways. Ltd.", and finally "East Bay Transit Co.", reflecting the increasing use of buses. The numbering of the streetcar lines changed several times over the years. The Key's streetcars operated out of several carbarns. The Central Carhouse was on the east side of Lake Merritt on Third Avenue. The Western Carhouse was located at 51st and Telegraph Avenue in the Temescal District of Oakland. The Elmhurst Carhouse was located in the east Oakland district of Elmhurst. In the early years of operation, these were supplemented by a number of smaller carbarns scattered throughout the East Bay area, many of them inherited from the pre-Key companies acquired by "Borax" Smith. The Key streetcars were painted green and cream white until they were re-painted in the green and yellow scheme of National City Lines after NCL acquired the Key System. The last Key streetcars ran in 1948. Related Rail Systems
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