page_title: Balboa Park station
section_title: Muni service
hierarchical_section_title: Balboa Park station / History / Muni service
caption_attribution_description: English: An old Boeing LRV (left) and a new Breda LRV laying over at Balboa Park in May 1997
context_page_description: Balboa Park is a Bay Area Rapid Transit and Muni Metro station complex located south of Balboa Park in southern San Francisco, California. It is an intermodal hub served by four BART routes, three Muni Metro lines, and a number of Muni bus routes. The station complex also includes two rail yards, Cameron Beach Yard and Green Light Rail Center, where Muni maintains Muni Metro trains and heritage streetcars. BART uses a below-grade island platform on the west side of the complex; Muni Metro routes use several smaller side platforms located on surface-level rail loops around the yards.
  The San Francisco and San Jose Railroad opened in 1863, with Elkton station located near the modern site. Passenger service on the line ran until about 1922. Electric streetcar service at Balboa Park began in 1892 with the San Francisco and San Mateo Electric Railway, which built a still-standing office building designed by Reid & Reid there in 1901. The United Railroads conglomerate built its Elkton shops on an adjacent parcel in 1907. In the 1960s, BART decided to use the Ocean View Branch right-of-way for part of a rapid transit system.
context_section_description: As Muni began transitioning from aging PCC streetcars to the Boeing USLRV in the 1970s, Elkton shops and the old car barn in Geneva Yard (which had been Muni's only rail yard since 1956) required modernization. Elkton Shops was closed on May 30, 1977, and replaced with a new facility. This Metro Rail Center included a loop track around its periphery, with an alighting area adjacent to the BART fare mezzanine in the southwest corner and a boarding area near San Jose Avenue in the southeast corner, plus a stop in the northeast corner of the yard. Some K Ingleside shuttle service was extended to Balboa Park on April 23, 1979, and all weekday service ran to Balboa Park after the line was converted to Muni Metro light rail operation on December 17, 1980. The Metro Rail Center was named the Curtis E. Green Light Rail Center in 1987. Green had become after Muni's general manager in 1974—the first African-American to lead a major transit system in the US—and retired in 1982. A second Muni Metro line, the M Ocean View, was extended to the station complex on August 30, 1980; it usually looped around Green Yard, but used the Geneva Yard loop at times. For some time beginning in 1982, the K and M lines were through-routed to avoid the yard loop. The Geneva Yard car barns were demolished in January 1983.
  In 1972, Muni began planning a long-proposed extension of the J Church line along San Jose Avenue (a section of which was built along the former Ocean View Branch through the Bernal Cut) to Balboa Park. The extension was intended to provide transit service to the Outer Mission, allow J Church and N Judah trains to access the carhouses via San Jose Avenue rather than a roundabout route via the K Ingleside line, and allow future through-routing of the J and M lines. Construction on the extension began in January 1989, but was delayed by the earthquake later that year. On August 31, 1991, J and N streetcars began using the extension to access the yards, thus providing revenue J service to Balboa at limited hours. Full-time revenue service began June 19, 1993.
  The extension included a new stop for the J line at San Jose and Ocean; inbound K trains also stopped at a plaza near that intersection. A small accessible platform was built east of Green Yard, next to the northbound track on San Jose at Seneca, to allow the planned through-routing. (Southbound trains were to use the existing alighting and boarding area on the Green Yard loop; a small accessible platform was available on the west side of the yard loop, north of the main alighting area.) However, although some weekday J and M service was through-routed from 1995 to 1998, full through-routing was never implemented. Instead, J trains shared the revenue loop around Green Yard with K trains, using the same boarding and alighting areas. J trains were diverted onto an inner track between the accessible platform and the boarding area; an underpass under the K track connected the J alighting area to the fare mezzanine. This allowed J and K trains to lay over separately so that irregular operations on one line would not impact the other.
caption: K (left) and J streetcars laying over at Balboa Park in 1997
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