Seattle Kraken expansion hockey team sets new standard for transit benefits in transportation demand management: free transit with ticket

This 2004 photo by San Francisco Chronicle photographer Mike Kepika, of people using MUNI transit to get to a San Francisco Giants baseball game, has left a lasting impression on the value of  the importance of convenient transit access to sports venues.

In "Framework of characteristics that support successful community development in association with the development of professional sports facilities" one of the sections is on transportation demand management and the leveraging of transit to and from sports events.  

Ideally, your ticket would automatically include access to transit.  It turns out that Professor Donald Shoup wrote about this last year too, "Hate Stadium Parking and Game-Day Traffic? An Idea," although I've been writing about it since the outset of the blog in 2005.  He calls it "transit validation."

Few communities require that teams do this.  I recommend that in cases where the locality or state provides significant funding towards the team's arena or stadium, that they obtain TDM requirements in the contract when they have the leverage to do so.   

And even if cities don't fund the facility, they should still require TDM as part of land use and transportation planning anyway, that it should be a condition/requirement of the use.

Twitter photo by Ryan J. Allen, 2019.  See "Baseball World Series in DC #3: Five lessons for transit."

In the DC area, the Washington Nationals baseball team and the Washington Football Team refuse to participate in an arrangement with the local transit system to ensure that the system remains open if the games run late--that just provides access to the system, not free transit.  

The Washington Capitals hockey team and the Washington Wizards basketball team do participate in such arrangements.

When the Nationals put notices on their scoreboard that the Metrorail station will close, people boo the transit system, not the team for not doing transportation demand management planning and user experience planning to ensure that fans will still have access to the system for late games.

Here and there across the country, there are best practice examples, although free transit is pretty rare.  

Sometimes best practice is fortuitous because of the decision to locate the sports facility at a transit station, for example that Madison Square Garden in Manhattan or the Barclays Center in Brooklyn are right on top of major transit centers, or that transit systems like Metrolink in Southern California run promotions, or teams pay towards transit station access improvements.

Until now, the four best examples of "transit validation" that I know of are:

(1) In Salt Lake City, University of Utah sports events--the ticket functions as a transit pass for the UTA system; 

(2) the Golden State Warriors basketball team in San Francisco has an arrangement with the city-specific MUNI system for free transit, although it doesn't include access to the regional BART heavy rail system;  

(3) tickets to events at the Talking Stick Arena in Phoenix, not just the Suns basketball games but also events that are ticketed by Ticketmaster include free transit access on the regional transit system--bus and light rail--automatically.  

(I don't claim this is a full list, it's just the ones that I know).  

(4) This one is a little different.  Various entities pay to extend the Pittsburgh center city "free fare" zone to include the football and baseball stadiums (and a casino) on the North Side, across the river from Downtown .  Separately, the PPG Paints Arena for the Penguins hockey team is located Downtown in the free fare zone, although the nearest station is about three blocks away.

(5) Now the new Seattle Kraken hockey team needs to be added to this reasonably exclusive list. 

This week is the grand opening of the team's new Climate Pledge Arena, with the first game on Saturday and concerts Tuesday (two days ago) and Friday.

The team's tickets cover access to Link Light Rail, the Seattle Monorail, which connects to Seattle Center from the nearest light rail station at Westlake Center, and the King County Metro bus system.   (It doesn't cover the ferry system.)  

Like in Phoenix, it appears that concerts at Climate Pledge Arena will include free transit access ("Getting to Climate Pledge Arena 101: Prepare to ditch the car," KIRO-radio), but I haven't been able to absolutely confirm it.

To facilitate this, the team owner paid for upgrades to the Monorail ticket gates, adding gates and other improvements so that the Monorail is now part of the regional Orca transit farecard media system.  Light rail users can transfer to the Monorail to complete their trip to the arena.  

And two weeks ago, the Link Light rail system in Seattle opened the Northgate extension, with three new stations and travel time from Northgate Station to Westlake Station of only 14 minutes, making the transit benefit more convenient to a greater number of area residents.

Rather than drive in, fans from beyond the Northgate station, like residents of Snohomish County, are encouraged to drive to and park at Northgate Station, and take transit the rest of the way.  (The Climate Pledge Arena app also includes the ability to reserve expensive parking spots.)

The same deal will apply to the Seattle Storm women's basketball team.  The same firm that owns the hockey team bought the Seattle Storm WNBA team.  And according to the app, next year's Seattle Storm tickets will include the same level of transit benefits.

Coordinated transportation improvements in association with new infrastructure/ Transformational Projects Action Planning. In my series on the Maryland Purple Line light rail program ("Revisiting the Purple Line (series) and a more complete program of complementary improvements to the transit network"), and later with the concept of Transformational Projects Action Planning ("Why can't the "Bilbao Effect" be reproduced? | Bilbao as an example of Transformational Projects Action Planning") I make the point that to bring about greater success, new infrastructure like light rail (or by extension, a new hockey team and completely renovated arena) should be complemented with a program of coordinated transit improvements across the system simultaneously.

The Seattle Kraken and the Climate Pledge Arena are a good example of that, in the inclusion of transit benefits with tickets, the opening of the Northgate light rail extension just before the start of the hockey season, improvements to the Monorail so that it is now part of the regional Orca fare media system, and other walking and bike improvements in the Seattle Center area, in advance of the opening, including protected bike lanes, new connections, and secure bike parking ("New travel options: walk, bike, roll, or take transit to the new Climate Pledge Arena in Uptown!," Seattle DOT).

SDOT graphic

Annual TDM survey requirement.  In an interesting wrinkle, the contract with the Climate Pledge Arena requires annual surveying on how people get to events to measure the success of shifting trips to sustainable modes: do fans arrive on foot; by bike; car--gas or electric; car pool; taxi/ride hailing; bus; light rail; etc.