Castro station is a

Muni Metro Muni Metro is a light rail system serving San Francisco, California, United States. Operated by the San Francisco Municipal Railway (Muni), a part of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), Muni's light rail lines saw an aver ...

station at the intersection of Market Street, Castro Street, and 17th Street in the

Castro District The Castro District, commonly referred to as the Castro, is a neighborhood in Eureka Valley in San Francisco. The Castro was one of the first gay neighborhoods in the United States. Having transformed from a working-class neighborhood throug ...

San Francisco, California San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

. The underground station is served by the

K Ingleside The K Ingleside is a light rail line of the Muni Metro system in San Francisco, California. It mainly serves the West Portal and Ingleside neighborhoods. The line opened on February 3, 1918, and was the first line to use the Twin Peaks Tunnel ...

M Ocean View The M Ocean View is a light rail line that is part of the Muni Metro system in San Francisco, California. Named after the Oceanview neighborhood, it runs between San Jose and Geneva and Embarcadero station, connecting Oceanview, San Franci ...

L Taraval The L Taraval is a light rail line of the Muni Metro system in San Francisco, California, mainly serving the Parkside District. While many streetcar lines were converted to bus lines after World War II, the L Taraval remained a streetcar line ...

and

S Shuttle The S Shuttle is a light rail service on the Muni Metro system in San Francisco, California. The service began in 2001 as the S Castro Shuttle, an effort to reduce crowding at Castro station. It was briefly discontinued in 2007 when the T Thi ...

lines. The

F Market The F Market & Wharves line is one of several light rail lines in San Francisco, California. Unlike most other lines in the system, the F line runs as a heritage streetcar service, almost exclusively using historic equipment from San Francisco' ...

line serves the station on the street level at 17th and Castro.

Station layout and history

The station consists of two

side platform A side platform (also known as a marginal platform or a single-face platform) is a platform positioned to the side of one or more railway tracks or guideways at a railway station, tram stop, or transitway. A station having dual side platforms, ...

s next to the tracks on the second level down with the concourse mezzanine level overlooking it. Uniquely among Muni Metro stations, the platforms are slightly curved due to the transition from the

Market Street subway The Market Street subway is a two-level subway tunnel that carries Muni Metro and BART trains under Market Street in San Francisco, California.

to the

Twin Peaks Tunnel The Twin Peaks Tunnel is a light rail/streetcar tunnel in San Francisco, California. The tunnel runs under Twin Peaks (San Francisco), Twin Peaks and is used by the K Ingleside, L Taraval, M Ocean View and S Shuttle lines of the Muni Metro sys ...

between this station and the now-disused Eureka Valley station, just southwest. At both Castro and , there is only one entrance on each side of Market Street leading into the station. (All other stations on the Market Street subway have entrances spread out along the length of the station.) The southern entrance is located in

Harvey Milk Plaza Harvey Milk Plaza is a transit plaza at the Castro Muni Metro subway station commemorating Harvey Milk, in San Francisco's Castro District, in the U.S. state of California. History Harvey Milk, the site's namesake, was a gay man who moved to ...

on the southwest corner of Market and Castro, and the northern entrance and street elevator on the northwest corner of Market and 17th. The station was constructed by

BART Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) is a rapid transit system serving the San Francisco Bay Area in California. BART serves List of Bay Area Rapid Transit stations, 50 stations along six routes and of track, including eBART, a spur line running t ...

as part of the Market Street subway. The BART Board approved the name "Castro" in December 1965. It was designed by Howard Grant AIA of Reid & Tarics Associates and was completed in 1976. Service at the station began on June 11, 1980. Castro station features a transit plaza at the corner of Castro Street and Market Street. In 1985 it was dedicated to Harvey Milk, the slain SF supervisor and first openly gay elected official in California. In May 2016, the escalator in Harvey Milk Plaza was retrofitted with colored lights (to resemble the

rainbow flag A rainbow flag is a multicolored flag consisting of the colors of the rainbow. The designs differ, but many of the colors are based on the seven spectral colors of the visible light spectrum. History In the 18th century, American Revolutionary ...

that flies above the plaza) after being rehabilitated. This test was considered a success; lights were added to 17 other escalators in the system, including the other three escalators at Castro, in 2018–19. Muni plans to construct accessibility improvements, including a second elevator, in Harvey Milk Plaza at the south entrance of the station. A 2020 determination that the plaza is eligible for inclusion on the

California Register of Historical Resources The California Register of Historical Resources is a California state government program for use by state and local agencies, private groups, and citizens to identify, evaluate, register, and protect California's historical resources. The Calif ...

was not expected to impact elevator construction, but could stall the larger plaza project. Elevator construction began in June 2023, with completion expected in 2026. In 2022, a new decorative railing was added on the F Market & Wharves boarding island as part of the Upper Market Street Safety Project. It features a quote from

Harvey Milk Harvey Bernard Milk (May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978) was an American politician and the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Milk was born and raised i ...

's 1977 "You've Got to Have Hope" speech, as well as an illustration of streetcar #1051, which is dedicated in Milk's honor.

References

External links

{{Bay Area Rail Stations Muni Metro stations Castro District, San Francisco Market Street (San Francisco) Railway stations located underground in California Railway stations in the United States opened in 1980