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New Year’s Eve light rail crowds raise questions ahead of Seattle World Cup
Heavy crowds packed Sound Transit light rail stations after New Year’s celebrations, prompting questions about how the system will handle even larger crowds when the FIFA World Cup comes to Seattle.
SEATTLE - After ringing in the New Year, thousands of people packed into Seattle light rail stations, some waiting shoulder to shoulder just to get a ride. Videos of the crowds have been shared across social media.
FOX 13 talked with Terry, who goes by ‘Turbo,’ and shot some of the videos shared on TikTok.
"I felt like I was in New York city almost, it was wild, it was so many people," Turbo said.
He adds, it was like a community bonding experience.
"Everyone was hooting and hollering when the trains were coming and cheering, it was a cool experience," he said.
Dig deeper:
"Social media gives you a great on-the-ground view of lots of people on the platform, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it was more crowded than we anticipated or more crowded than we could handle," said Henry Bendon, Public Information Officer for Sound Transit.
Bendon explained, what people are seeing in those videos was a 15-minute window from around 12:30 a.m. – 12:45 a.m. He said the crowds were cleared by 1 a.m.
Those videos got FOX 13 wondering how Sound Transit plans to handle the FIFA World Cup, when 750,000 people are expected to descend on Seattle? We took that question straight to Sound Transit.
"We are absolutely prepared for the World Cup, and that's why, you know we have work scheduled this January, with some shutdowns to continue our work on the 2 Line and the Crosslake connection, and when that train opens, we will be running trains at peak every four minutes between Lynwood and International District, and every five minutes off peak, we are working on resiliency up and down the line," Bendon said.
He adds they have a dedicated task force in charge of making sure World Cup safety and service goes well, and one of their big goals this year is to provide the world with a world-class transit experience to our world-class Seattle stadium.
"When it comes to crowds and sports, we have a playbook," Bendon said. "You know, we do this every week for the Seahawks, for the mariners, for the sounders, for UW, we queue trains in pockets and we have them ready to roll."
"One of the things that I think Seattle forgets a little bit, but we should all remember, we're big city, we got a lot of people. And, you know, big cities have big crowds sometimes," Bendon said.
He also told FOX 13 it was delightful to see so many people taking advantage of the free late-night transit to get home safely after their New Year's celebrations.
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The Source: Information in this story came from Sound Transit and original FOX 13 Seattle reporting and interviews.