Ticket to Ride: San Francisco features the familiar gameplay from the Ticket to Ride series - collect cards, claim routes, draw tickets - but on a map of 1960s San Francisco that allows you to complete a game in no more than 15 minutes.

Each player starts with a supply of 20 cable cars, two transportation cards in hand, and one or two destination tickets that show locations in San Francisco. On a turn, you either draw two transportation cards from the deck or from the five face-up cards (or you take one face-up ferry, which counts as any of the six colors in the game) or you claim a route on the board by discarding cards that match the color of the route being claimed (with any set of cards allowing you to claim a gray route, but some routes requiring specific colors). When you complete a route that has a souvenir icon on it, such as the Lombard Street, the Embarcadero, or the Golden Gate Bridge, you claim a souvenir from that location.

Players take turns until someone has no more than two cable cars in their supply, then each player plays one last turn, including the player who triggered the end of the game. Then, players sum up their points, scoring points for (1) the routes they've claimed during the game, (2) the destination tickets they've completed (by connecting the two locations on a ticket with a continuous line of their cable cars), and (3) the souvenirs they've collected, with a full set of seven souvenirs being worth 12 points. Players lose points for any incomplete destination tickets, and whoever has the highest score wins!