FIFA Club World Cup 2025 Transit Service

9 Replies to “FIFA Club World Cup 2025 Transit Service”

1. Thank you for this post, and the many other information-packed posts you put out, Michael!

2. I think these traffic notices are making mountains out of molehills. FIFA is reducing prices and blocking off sections because the demand is far lower than they expected, for many reasons. There’s a lot of nickel-and-diming to buy tickets or even watch on TV (it’s on a network most Americans can’t get); the players of all the non-Asian/African/Oceania teams don’t really want to play it (they just finished their season, and would immediately head to their clubs’ training camps after the tournament); and many foreign fans are loath to travel to the United States because of the guy in the White House.

   A good primer about the tournament from the independent news/fan site Sounder at Heart, is here. Writer Jeremiah Oshan makes his living covering the team for the site, so he’s a great information source. https://www.sounderatheart.com/2025/06/club-world-cup-faq/ (NOTE: Some *very* NSFW language in the comment section where Sounder fans quite clearly trash the tournament so beware.)

   BTW, if I was still a Sounder season ticket holder, I’d still ignore the games here. I’m not thrilled with Qatari petrol money snapping up underachieving Paris St-Germain — a team very few Parisians cared about before — and buying a Champions League, and I would rather rip out my eyeballs than pay to watch deathly boring Atletico Madrid. That said, River Plate-Inter Milan is interesting; South American club soccer is fantastic, and Inter was the other Champions League finalist.

   1. I tried explaining to the Sounders mgmt why not everyone wanted to be packed in at football matches, before giving up my season ticket and going to very few matches since the end of the Before Times. Now that the Reign have the same owner, they’ve been trying to force ticketholders into fewer sections. Ugh.

      Management’s race to get rid of their best players has also not gone unnoticed. Management now seems to want mediocrity. And a soccer-specific stadium far away from Seattle and transit. Not with my tax money!

3. 2-Link has been back up and running to Redmond for a couple hours now.

   Any first hand reports on whether or not they are going slow through the repaired area?

   Enquiring minds want to know!

   1. I’m glad that normal operations have resumed. I hope that ST figures out what additional testing is needed to make sure it doesn’t happen again. We are sure to get many more days this year several degrees hotter than 85 (if that is indeed the primary source of the problem).

      The 4-minute test for 1/2 Lines in North Seattle is happening this morning too. I live several miles from both of these things — so I can’t witness what’s happening.

      1. I’m sure that ST will do a root cause failure analysis and come out of this event in better shape than they started. That is what responsible agencies do.

         As far as interline testing goes, it appears to be going very well. Some bunching and apparently a few missed trains. It’s nice to see.

      2. I will opine that finding and resolving problems when it’s just the starter line (not yet crossing Lake Washington) was a big reason why I thought the early line segment opening was a good idea. Something like this would have been much more disruptive if the full 2 Line was opened all at once and this happened.

      3. This is a timely starter thread for today’s open thread.

      4. @Al S.,

         “Something like this would have been much more disruptive if the full 2 Line was opened all at once…”

         Not really. The interim operational plan would have been exactly the same, the only difference being that they would need to slot in the 2-Link trains into the interlined segment. But that isn’t hard, as we witnessed today.

         Additionally, any capacity issues could be easily resolved by increasing train length (2-Link won’t be operating with 4-car trains). So even if there was a frequency reduction, capacity would not be an issue.

         But I’m glad ST got this resolved, and got it resolved quickly. And hopefully they learned something and will have a more robust system going forward.

         Progress!

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