Valkyries Parade Helps Muni and BART Break Records, Too
At least two Bay Area public transit agencies broke post-pandemic ridership records on Wednesday, as thousands of cheering fans rode buses and trains to San Francisco’s waterfront for the Golden State Valkyries’ WNBA championship parade.
“Valkyries fever is very real,” said Parisa Safarzadeh, the director of communications for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, which runs Muni, the city’s public transit service.
Muni logged just over 600,000 trips on Wednesday, Safarzadeh said, besting the previous post-pandemic single-day ridership record set last month by more than 10,000 trips.
“Given ridership is usually lower in November than it is in October, seeing such a big day in November is pretty noteworthy to us,” Safarzadeh said.
BART also set a single-day post-pandemic ridership record on Wednesday. The agency said in a post on the social media platform X that it provided over 260,000 trips, with big upticks at Embarcadero and Montgomery stations, near the start of the parade’s route. BART’s previous single-day record was Oct. 6 with over 254,000 trips.
Bay Area sports fans have driven these ridership bumps in recent history. The Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority broke an all-time special event ridership record when World Cup matches came to Levi’s Stadium.
BART said in a press release that 6 out of ten of its highest ridership days have been championship parades. The agency has even attributed bumps in ridership to star baseball players, like the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani.
This week’s packed trains and buses came less than a day after voters in several Bay Area counties carried to victory two tax measures that avert significant service cuts at BART, Muni and several other Bay Area transit agencies.
While public transit ridership has been steadily improving across the region since the COVID-19 pandemic, agencies are still not carrying the same number of riders as before shelter-in-place orders and remote work.
This year, BART has notched monthly year-over-year weekday ridership increases of over 10%, but overall weekday ridership remains slightly above half of what it was before the pandemic. The agency has said remote work has brought “unprecedented ridership changes.”
Muni’s ridership has rebounded more significantly. The agency said overall ridership in September was about 84% of pre-pandemic levels, and weekend ridership reached 99% of pre-pandemic levels. Safarzadeh said the agency has seen its 16 highest ridership days since August.
She said Muni ridership on the Valkyries’ parade day was more than double what it was in 2022, when the Golden State Warriors held their NBA championship parade.