It is hard to picture toney baseball stadiums and basketball arenas abutting a busy container port. And right next to skyrises and residential developments.

But in the historical case of SF the carmens' union in particular seemed to be blind to what was going on; and that mattered because they had the power to do something about it. All you had to do is look around at other cities and see one-man buses were taking over. And then look a little farther into the future and see those same bustituters really were planning to get rid of all public transport to be supplanted by private autos. Remember GM quit the bus business when the time came.

If the unions had agreed to one-man in the 30's the Market St. Ry and indeed Muni would have bought PCC's in enough numbers for the public to see what a modern electric railway had to offer. Both of those ops had no motive to buy modern streetcars when they cost more to buy and then double to put out on a route.

So they let the heavy streetcars wear out along with the trackage. They wanted a dilapidated system to make it easier to convert to buses. In 1949 they looked at Mission St. and saw the reality of having to relay the track and then buy PCC's that cost more and still have a conductor on board. So you can see why they kept Geary instead of Mission as a little gift to the union(I believe there were still some conductors that did not have drivers licenses). But Geary was doomed with Urban Removal looming and DPW wanting the Geary-O'Farrell one-way couplet. That would have required quite a bit of new track on O'Farrell downtown.

It would have been better to have kept Mission and trolley-bused Geary in 1949. But the track needed to be rebuiltt due to disinvestment by the Market ST. Ry caused by the union's wasting its considerable power on keeping one-man instead of insisting on the City absorbing the MSR earlier and maintaining the infrastructure and stopping the plan to sell off all the Market ST. Railways real estate(i.e. the many carhouses in the City).