Key System
San Francisco and the East Bay area
Updated July 5 2017
The Key System (so named because its route formed the shape of a skeleton key), served the East
Bay area with service from Oakland and other cities into San Francisco. Originally, the cars
ran to a ferry terminal, but with the construction of the Oakland Bay bridge, service was
direct to a terminal in San Francisco (the SP, Key System and Sacramento Northern were on
the lower deck of the Bay Bridge).
Eventually the auto took over and the system was dismantled, only to be resurrected years later
by the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system.
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