Only the southern half is historically part of El Camino Real, which connected the missions.

[1] Near Van Ness Avenue, the road turns northeast again and travels through Mid-Market and South of Market (running parallel to, and a full block south of Market Street) before ending at The Embarcadero in downtown San Francisco.

The Mission Street portion in San Francisco is served 24 hours per day by the San Francisco Municipal Railway 14 Mission trolleybus, two BART stations that run below grade in the Inner Mission, and the remainder of the San Francisco BART stations less than a half mile away, notably including those on the Market Street subway.

[4] The Salesforce Transit Center, which replaced the Transbay Terminal, straddles several blocks between Mission and Howard.

From the completion of the Bay Bridge in 1936 until the 1950s, it was also the western terminus for Key System commuter rail service.