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31 January 2007

Transportation Reference Table

As part of a framework for the coming discussions on transportation, I've put together a table that shows all 30 existing ballparks along with Cisco Field. It shows distances from downtowns and transit hubs plus available transit modes to the venue. Light Rail is overhead electrified streetcar-style rail like SF MUNI Metro and VTA's LRT. Rapid Rail is like BART, NY Subway, and DC's Metro. Commuter rail is like Caltrain or LA's Metrolink. Buses are either local or express service. Not included are ferries or very short distance, low-use options like Arlington's hotel shuttle or downtown Detroit's people mover.

The last column shows available parking spaces. Check the legend for more information.



Comment away.

4 comments:

Jeffrey said...

Looking at the chart my first reaction is... there are a whole bunch on "N's" and not too many with "Y's" in all the boxes.

Makes me question how necessary BART really is.

drummer510 said...

makes sense that the canadians offer all of the transit options. Camden yards as well.

Anonymous said...

assuming all the decisions (Fremont changing zoning, environmental ok's, resolution of infrastructure issues esp. financial, etc) go in Wolff's favor reasonably quickly and allowing the ballpark to be completed sooner than later, ballpark attendance may depend very heavily for several years on fans' driving to games, possibly under less than ideal freeway and other roadway conditions (since that also would take funding and time to improve).

The very useful chart, among other things, indicates that public transit is very important particularly to attendance at ballparks that Wolff has invoked as models of the baseball experience that the A's are aiming for.

Anonymous said...

Safeco has plenty of parking downtown; the walk isn't that bad, and they run "Sharks Shuttle"-type buses. It seems to work well, but I bet football season(next door) is somewhat harder to manage.

I know Turner does the MARTA to the shuttle bus transfer, not sure how popular that is. How did they run an Olympics with no rail service to the site?

Camden Yards has plenty of rail outside their door, but much of it is unavailable after night games or weekends. Pity--when I lived in Philly we could make it to/from a game at Camden faster than friends in Metro DC (VA) could. Rail could have helped bridge the gap.