Friday, February 28, 2020
NHL Seattle To Pay For Fans' Transit To Home Games
www.ticketnews.com: When the NHL’s newest expansion team debuts in Seattle next year, local hockey fans will be able to get to and from the games free of charge. NHL Seattle announced an ambitious plan to provide free transit options for ticket holders in an effort to enhance fan experience and remain environmentally friendly.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Seattle is one of my favorite cities on the West Coast. It is also becoming one of the largest. Traffic is sometimes worse than D.C. or LA and traffic authorities are having trouble expanding roads to accommodate the increased traffic. Seattle is also a city, so finding parking is a nightmare just in itself. Add in a new hockey game, with the Seattle Seahawks and regular Downtown traffic, and it becomes a huge puzzle. Incentivizing fans to take the monorail system in downtown Seattle is a good direction to start in. I've taken the monorail system before and it was cool, but definitely only used by tourists, which is weird. Many cities that I have been in, including DC and Pittsburgh, have some sort of public transportation system that many commuters take. But in Seattle, it seems like the main mode of transportation is still the car. Offering free travel to and from a hockey game is a huge incentive for fans to take the monorail system. Hopefully, this will increase ridership, but without increasing the need to expand the system. Renovating roads is a big operation. Expanding the monorail too would be very disruptive and expensive. I wonder how it will turn out.
I think it is really interesting that the NHL is going to try to use the monorail to get the fans to the hockey games. But also I really just don’t see how this is really going to work. The monorail is tiny and can’t fit that many people on, so people are going to have to wait for a long time to get on the monorail. This article talks about how the monorail trip would only be 5 minutes, but that is because the monorail only goes between two locations that are only a couple blocks apart so it has never been a long ride, if people want to ride the monorail to Westlake center, they have to get on at Seattle Center which is a major tourist destination and there is not a lot of parking there so people will have to pay for parking or get public transportation to Seattle center. Or if they expand the monorail that is just more construction in downtown Seattle for reasons of transportation, and I have never seen a city finish construction projects as slow as Seattle does. I really do think the intentions of using the monorail are good, but there is a reason it mostly a tourist destination. It really just isn’t that convenient or even that necessary. With so much new construction in Seattle recently to build a light rail, I really do appreciate that they are trying to use existing infrastructure and an existing system. I would love to see how this works out. But also maybe the light rail will be finished by then and people would take that?
As a new fan of the NHL who may currently be a little obsessed (thanks, Emily and Olav!!!) and a long-time fan of box office/ticketing practices, this is such a cool story!! I think it's such a great idea to give ticket-holders the opportunity to get to a game for free. I think this has some serious potential to increase fan turnout for people whose only inhibitor was transportation issues, and it could be a huge breath of fresh air (haha) for the environment. I mean, the traffic outside an arena for a sport event is absolutely ridiculous. With so many fewer people individually trying to get in and out with their vehicles, this could seriously change the game for traffic too.
In terms of issues that may arise, all I can think about is the wait times, the crowds, the maneuvering around of so many people, etc. that would discourage the use of this service. I'm interested to see where this goes, and am definitely interested in seeing the results of it.
I think that this is a very interesting idea but I, too, am skeptical about the practical implementation of using the monorail system as a forever free method of transportation for an indiscernable amount of people. It is a wonderful idea to encourage the people of Seattle to go to home hockey games while also theoretically conserving gas (as people presumably would not need a car to get there) but, from reading Annika and Bru’s comments from above, this does not seem like it would entirely be the case. I think that it is really interesting that, in a city as environmentally progressive as Seattle, public transit does not seem to be as largely ingrained in the city’s operations as it could be; the reliance is, it seems to be, still on the car rather than a train or bus system. That the monorail system is also almost singularly used by tourists is also a problem; if the local population does not already use the monorail system, then it seems like an extra step in an already convoluted process to use the train.
Post a Comment