Mann v. City & County of San Francisco

SCHMIDT, J., pro tem. In 1933 appellant as a taxpayer filed in the superior court “his petition for writ of mandate” in which he set forth, among other things, that in 1918 the respondent City and County of San Francisco inaugurated as part of its municipal transportation system an auto -bus service known and designated as “bus line No. 2”, describing its route, claiming that he was a patron thereof, and that said bus line furnished sole and exclusive means of transportation and public conveyance to petitioner and other residents in the City and County of San Francisco. The area described provided the sole and exclusive transportation upon and along the ocean beach in said City and [653]County of San Francisco; that said bus line was necessary to the public convenience; that on the third day of January, 1933, the respondents Public Utilities Commission and respondent Cahill, the duly appointed manager of public utilities in the City and County of San Francisco, “wholly discontinued and abandoned the bus line transportation service in the area . . . described, discontinuing and abandoning part of the public utility system owned by the City and County of San Francisco and although often requested to continue and/or to replace said transportation service . . . ever since have refused and now refuses to operate busses or any other instruments of transportation over that part of the utilities system or upon the route herein above designated ‘bus line No. 2’.” The prayer of the petition was for an alternative writ to issue directing the commission to restore the municipal transportation service designated as bus line No. 2 or show cause at a specified time why they had not done so. To this petition respondents interposed a general demurrer which the court sustained without leave to amend and entered judgment for respondents, from which judgment appellant appeals. The petition does not charge that the commission acted arbitrarily nor does it allege any fraud.

The single question for decision is: Do the powers conferred and the duties imposed upon the Public Utilities Commission of the City and County of San Francisco by its charter authorize and empower that commission to discontinue or abandon part of its transportation service? The freeholders’ charter of the City and County of San Francisco after providing for a Public Utilities Commission by section 121 provides “general powers and duties of the commission” as follows: “The public utilities commission shall have charge of the construction, management, supervision, maintenance, extension, operation, and control of all public utilities and other properties used, owned, acquired, leased or constructed by the city and county, . . . for the purpose of supplying any public utility service to the city and county and its inhabitants . . . The commission shall locate and determine the character and type of all construction and additions, betterments, and extensions to utilities under its control, and shall determine the policy for such construction or the making of such additions, better-