Transportation agencies are introducing new products and service expansions tied to World Cup matches as the games boost ridership, offering a welcome windfall of energy and enthusiasm for public transit, which has faced several years of setbacks following the COVID-19 pandemic.

Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) trains serving Levi's Stadium and the San Francisco Bay Area are seeing record ridership. The stadium, home to the San Francisco 49ers, is one of 11 sites in the United States hosting matches during the 2026 FIFA World Cup, expected to attract 5 million visitors from across the world.

"Our ridership for the World Cup matches exploded," Stacey Hendler Ross, VTA public information officer, said in an email, indicating ridership is about 170 percent higher than it generally is for home 49ers games at the stadium. VTA ridership for Super Bowl LX Feb. 8 reached about 31,000. The June 25 World Cup match pitting Paraguay against Australia brought 41,600 riders to VTA. (With a final score of 0-0, the game was a draw.)

Transit watchers can look to several factors driving strong ridership. VTA is making it easy to purchase tickets via the Transit app, a platform familiar to many international and domestic visitors.

"It's worked extremely well proving an easy, mobile-friendly way to purchase roundtrip fare for VTA and combo packages for VTA and Caltrain fare are available as well," Ross said.

VTA serves the stadium directly. However, other transit providers in the region — including Caltrain, the commuter rail line connecting San Francisco to Silicon Valley, and Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) — are adjusting schedules, running longer trains and taking other steps to coordinate service, making public transit an easy and convenient choice for fans.

BART added longer trains Wednesday to accommodate additional passengers heading to the stadium for the 5 p.m. match. The agency also announced "unlike many rail systems around the country, BART is not implementing surge pricing for FIFA. Riders pay the regular fare."

The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) has introduced a feature in its MBTA mTicket app allowing World Cup fans to purchase their train tickets to Gillette Stadium — known as Boston Stadium during the World Cup — simply by selecting "Buy Tickets to Boston Stadium."

MBTA is operating nonstop express trains on the T-Line for the 22-mile trip to south Boston serving the stadium on match days. Tickets are $80. There is no bus or subway service to Boston Stadium. The round-trip special service also includes travel across the entire commuter rail network, Maya Bingaman, MBTA communications manager, said.

That easy-to-buy, nonstop express ticket may translate to a bit of sticker shock for regular riders of the Boston transit network. A standard one-way ticket for travel from South Station to the Foxboro Station near Boston Stadium is $8.75 and takes about an hour with stops, according to MBTA's trip-planning web portal.

"The MBTA is running an unprecedented amount of service for the World Cup," Bingaman said via email. "We were prepared to mobilize up to 20,000 riders to and from each of the seven matches Boston is hosting. This far exceeds the 3,000 riders for the friendly match and about 2,000 riders for a typical Patriots game."

The Kansas City Streetcar is also breaking ridership records. The 5.7-mile free streetcar serving downtown Kansas City, Mo., transported more than 48,200 passengers June 27, setting a one-day record. Streetcars have expanded their service hours to 2 a.m.

"We came in with a solid plan to maximize our system's capacity, and that plan is working exactly as intended — if not even better than we anticipated," Tom Gerend, executive director of the KC Streetcar Authority, said in a statement.

Streetcar ridership between June 11 and June 28 totaled 409,670 passenger trips, with an average daily ridership of 34,139 trips, the KC Streetcar Authority reported.

In Los Angeles, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority is creating dozens of free fan events across its service area, known as Transit-First Fan Zones, a move to generate buzz around the matches and public transit, which may be the best way to get to SoFi Stadium in Inglewood.

Two hours before kickoff at SoFi Stadium on June 12, traffic speeds within a one-mile radius of the stadium began dropping. By about 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. speeds had fallen 20 percent compared with normal traffic levels, according to data compiled by INRIX, a transportation data analytics firm.

Similar slowdowns occurred around Levi's Stadium, Boston Stadium and MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. Traffic speeds around Boston Stadium declined 32 percent on June 13 during the 7 p.m. hour, in anticipation of the 9 p.m. kickoff.

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