Potrero Division

Potrero is one of Muni's two trolley-coach yards, and its record is of a building modified for each new generation of vehicle. A 1984 staff paper states the problem plainly: the railway's first articulated trolley coaches were due in 1988-89, neither Presidio nor Potrero could handle them for storage or maintenance, and so preliminary modification work at Potrero had to begin before early 1985 — Potrero would be ready by 1988, ahead of Presidio. The federal transit programme for 1986-87 carries "Potrero Division Modifications" at $3,413,200, of which $2,730,560 was federal and $682,640 the local match. The work was not always well done: the Budget Analyst's management audit of Muni cites costly design flaws in the renovation, among them a three-post lift for the new 60-foot articulated coaches built too close to a bearing wall and an electrical circuit. The same audit uses the division to illustrate a staffing dispute — on one April morning in 1996 Potrero reported ten transit runs undispatched for want of an operator, while employing thirteen operators full time in non-driving duties. The yard has long been where Muni trains, too, running both a supervisory course and a transit fleet training programme sponsored by the Board of Education. A permit to erect a four-storey bus maintenance facility here, declared at $400 million, was withdrawn in 2023 and filed again in 2024.