lines on the major thoroughfares of the city center. Those objections disappeared after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. The quake and resulting fire destroyed the power houses and car barns of both the Cal Cable and the URR's Powell Street lines, together with the 117 cable cars stored within them. The subsequent race to rebuild the city allowed the URR to replace most of its cable car lines with electric streetcar lines. By 1912, only eight cable car lines remained, all with steep grades impassable to electric streetcars. In the 1920s and 1930s, these remaining lines came under pressure from the much-improved motor buses of the era, which could now climb steeper hills than the electric streetcar. By 1944, five of those cable car lines had survived: the two Powell Street lines – by then under municipal ownership, as part of Muni – and the three lines owned by the still-independent Cal Cable. Fight to remain open In 1947, Mayor Roger Lapham proposed the closure of the two municipally owned lines. In response, a joint meeting of 27 women's civic groups, led by Friedel Klussmann, formed the Citizens' Committee to Save the Cable Cars. In a famous battle of wills, the citizens' committee eventually forced a referendum on an amendment to the city charter, compelling the city to continue operating the Powell Street lines. This passed overwhelmingly, by 166,989 votes to 51,457. Klussman led another campaign in 1948 to have the city acquire Cal Cable, but the referendum fell short of the required majority, with 58% in favor of acquisition; a second referendum in 1949, requiring a simple majority, passed and the city began negotiations with Cal Cable. In August 1951, the three Cal Cable lines were shut down when the company was unable to afford insurance. The city purchased and reopened the lines in January 1952, but another referendum that would have funded maintenance for the California Street tracks and the powerhouse and car barn at Hyde and California failed in November 1953. The amendment to the city charter did not protect the newly acquired Cal Cable lines, and the city proceeded with plans to replace them with buses; in addition, businesses in Union Square and downtown began advancing plans to convert O'Farrell to automobile traffic, which would remove service through the Tenderloin district via the inner section of the O'Farrell Jones & Hyde line. The result was a