Will Nationals Fans Be Able To Get Home After Postseason Games?
Nationals Ballpark sits in the southeast quadrant of Washington, D.C. Take a look at this map of the District and its environs. More than half way down, right of center, is a marker for Washington Navy Yard. That’s approximately where the ballpark is. As you can see, the area is accessible by highways connecting the District to Virginia and Maryland. There is also a Metro stop at the ballpark. Metro is the subway run by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA). Here’s the Metro map. Notice the stop on the Green Line for Navy Yard-Ballpark.
The Nationals encourage fans to take public transportation to the ballpark, but also provide plenty of options and information for driving to — and parking near — the ballpark. The Nationals may keep track of how many fans drive to games, versus take public transportation, but that information isn’t publicly available.
The Metro stops running at midnight Sundays through Thursdays.. Typically, that’s not a problem for Nationals fans traveling to and from the ballpark on the Metro, as the night games start at 7:05 p.m. local time. Unless a game extends well into extra innings, fans usually have plenty of time to take a Metro train home.
But some games have gone well into extra innings, and that’s been a problem for fans who took Metro to the game and expected to take it home. This issue first arose in June, when the Nationals played the Mets on June 5, and the game lasted into the 12th inning. As the game moved toward 11 p.m., ballpark officials announced the Metro would stop running at midnight. That meant that fans had to leave the ballpark with enough time to catch a train at the Navy Yards/Green Line station and get to their destination by midnight. Some fans left, and missed the Nationals’ walk-off victory on a Bryce Harper single in the bottom of the 12th, at 11:20 p.m.
The DC Sports Bog at the Washington Post addressed the issue a few days later. It turns out that the Nationals could pay WMATA almost $30,000 to extend the Metro service by an additional hour, but the transit agency requires a contract and a deposit in advance. The Nationals can’t just request the extra hour when a game runs into extra innings and then pay the $30,000 fee afterward. In fact, when the Nationals played the Phillies on Sunday Night Baseball on May 6 — a game that started at 8:05 p.m. local time — the Nationals did contract for the extra hour of service and pay the deposit, and then triggered the extra hour of train service as the game wore on.
More from the DC Sports Bog:
A portion of the $29,500 extra-hour cost is reimbursable to the venue or organization in question, based on the additional fare revenue generated in that extra hour. For the Phillies game, the Nats were reimbursed $1,611 for the 445 passengers who used the system after midnight. In other words, the Nats paid WMATA more than $62 for each fan who took advantage of the extra hour of service.
The issue came to the fore, again, a few weeks ago when the Nationals faced off against division rival Atlanta Braves on Monday, Aug. 20. Rain delayed the start of the game to 8 p.m. The teams battled into the 13th inning, and the Nationals won on a walk-off single by Chad Tracy. It was well past midnight when the winning run crossed the plate. As with the June game, the Nationals announced the closing time for the Metro. Some fans left; others stayed. Those who stayed were none too happy when they arrived at a closed Metro station after midnight. A local radio station talked to some of the disgruntled fans and reported the story from the Metro station.
Now, with the Nationals heading toward their first postseason, the issue is coming to a head. Although the exact time for postseason games haven’t been set, many East-Coast postseason games start at 8:05 p.m., so that FOX and TBS can broadcast the games in prime time. And postseason games tend to run longer, as the networks run more commercials to recoup the enormous fees they pay MLB to broadcast the games. The Nationals are reportedly interested in entering into a deal with WMATA in advance of the postseason that would allow the Nationals to request the additional hour of Metro service, either before the game or as the game proceeds. Indeed, as noted in the DC Sports Blog post, the Washington Capitals, the NHL team, has such a deal with WMATA for its playoff games.
But MLB reportedly has raised concerns about setting a precedent of having teams pay to keep the local subway and rail service open extra hours to accommodate fans at late-running games. It’s not clear why MLB is getting involved and whether its concerns about setting precedents are well-founded. A D.C. television station investigated how other cities handle train services for games ending after midnight and reported that many cities run their trains for a hour after the last out of the game is made.
For the moment, the Nationals, WMATA and MLB remain at an impasse. It’s hard to imagine the Nationals heading into the postseason without the issue resolved and without clear directions to fans — before and during games — about their transportation options. And it’s certainly not in MLB’s interest to see fans leaving a postseason game early to catch the last train home.
Wendy writes about sports and the business of sports. She's been published most recently by Vice Sports, Deadspin and NewYorker.com. You can find her work at wendythurm.pressfolios.com and follow her on Twitter @hangingsliders.
Taking the Metro after the game is for chumps anyway. Take a cab or better yet take uber. Considering you probably paid close to $20 for the last round of beers, spending another $20 to quickly and safely make it home instead of riding the Metro after midnight squeezed in with a bunch of sweaty dudes seems like a no-brainer.
Nats fans tend to enjoy being squeezed in with a bunch of sweaty dudes.
How long do you have to wait in line at a cab stand with 10,000 other people after a playoff game?
Has anyone tried uber after a game? Curious whether it’s easy to get a car.
pretty sure there won’t be 5000 Uber drivers available 15 minutes after the game…..
Yeah, but most people are chumps that stand in the ridiculous line for cabs. I’ve ubered twice and it took 5-10 mins for them to arrive, and if I were on top of it and had the pickup location set in advance, it would have been shorter. Don’t know why I’m saying this. Über sucks. Don’t use it after the game.
public transit is never for chumps.
Public transit is always for chumps. Buy a damn car.
Buy a damn car? Tell that to a New Yorker, chump. Public transit FTW!
Comparisons to other cities are apples and oranges. Metro funding comes from 2 different states plus the District (whose budget is controlled by Congress), making it a much different situation than any other team deals with. The Nats are willing to pay, so MLB should allow them to pay. Does MLB get involved in the operating budget decisions for other clubs?
Does MLB ever do anything right?
What kind of a precedent that will destroy baseball would this agreement set?
“Does MLB get involved in the operating budget decisions for other clubs?”
Every draft pick who wasn’t offered any more than “slot” to sign would say yes, MLB gets involved in the operating budget decisions for all clubs.
So MLB apparently thinks it is preferable for the cost of running subways after-hours to be shifted to takpayers who do not attend games, rather than for the teams to pay (thereby shifting the cost to people who actually use the service).
I’ve read that each postseason game is worth at least $1 million to the home team, just in gate revenue, not counting TV and next season ticket sales.
You shouldn’t count TV in any event. All the money for postseason broadcasts goes directly from the broadcaster to MLB.
As a Nats fan who bought post-season tickets, the cheapest seats are $35 (most expensive excluding suites are $325). The Nats will be able to squeeze more than the 40,500 capacity but let’s assume all tickets are $35 and there are 40,000 seats. That’s $1.4 million. I would conservatively say the average price is about $60 and they will have about 44,000 in there. That’s about $2.6 million.
DC Sports Bog 🙁
That IS how it’s spelled.
This is also a problem in Oakland, where fans take BART.
The BART continues running until 2 in the morning though, if I remember correctly.
Pretty much everything is a problem in Oakland
And in Seattle, where quite a few take the Ferries.
And in Cleveland where the few fans take 1992 rusted out Dodge Dakota’s.
Somehow, this isn’t a problem on the North side of Chicago.
It’s not a problem on the South Side either where they put extra trains on the Rred Line and Metra after the ball games. Don’t know who pays for that.
The report on other cities is wrong for San Francisco. First, SF and Oakland shouldn’t be lumped together since most Giants fans use Caltrain while BART is the only option for A’s fans. Giants fans in the East Bay use BART, but they’re a minority.
Second, Caltrain always runs two trains after the game has ended, as their website states. (http://www.caltrain.com/riderinfo/specialevents/Giants_Service_2012.html) I don’t know if a Giants game has gone past midnight to test this theory, but I doubt Caltrain would want to deal with the uproar if they left fans stranded. The postgame trains are filled beyond capacity regularly, so that’s thousands of fans who would be without transit options, many of whom live 30-40 miles away down the peninsula.
“I don’t know if a Giants game has gone past midnight to test this theory, but I doubt Caltrain would want to deal with the uproar if they left fans stranded. The postgame trains are filled beyond capacity regularly, so that’s thousands of fans who would be without transit options, many of whom live 30-40 miles away down the peninsula.”
I don’t know why you think Caltrain would care about a couple thousand fans “uproar” but Metro doesn’t? If it is closed, it’s closed…how can you complain…esp considering the announcement they made. DC fans also may live 30 miles away (end of the orange or blue lines) so I dont think distance is anything special for Caltrain.
I guess I should stop complaining that the NYC subway trains have every inch of space packed with people and just be happy that there are multiple trains waiting at the station when the games end.
And it’s 24 hours! Woo!!
Oh, cry me a fucking river.
If I could think of one thing that would make the worst traffic in the country any worse…
I moved from the LA area to the Cincinnati (EST) area 2 years ago. I hate, hate, hate that sports of all kinds starts so late here. I am actually accustomed to sleeping at night.
Start the damn playoff games at 7 p.m. Eastern.
West coast is still at work…
Who gives a sh!t?
I moved from the LA area to the Cincinnati (EST) area 2 years ago.
Not that it matters, but at least for baseball season, Cincinnati is on Eastern Daylight Time (EDT), not Eastern Standard Time (EST).
This ownership was given an f-in sweetheart deal and now the Metro, which is waaay under-subsidized relative to other mass transit systems, should pay for the Nationals? That’s a joke. Considering the number of times the team would actually have to pay in a given season, it is a drop in the bucket. They will only breed ill-will if they don’t fix this now that the team is developing a larger fan base.
Reading comprehension? The Nats want to pay for a service that most other cities already provide.
They chose to stop paying for it years ago, not MLB. They are only just now caving, so sorry, full knowledge problem.
Does it make sense to force the Nationals to cough up $60 per person to ride the Metro, simply for the sake of “goodwill”? $30,000 is a lot of money, even to a baseball team. It’s not a cut-and-dry question.
$30,000 per playoff game is not a lot of money.
The stadium holds 40,000 people and I imagine all the playoff games will be sellouts. That amounts to less than $1 per ticket. And given what I’ve heard about the gigantic price bump the Nationals are instituting for playoff tickets, we’re talking chump change.
$30,000 is also a lot for a city to cough up. If the Nats don’t want to pay for it, I see no reason for metro to open on my dime.
That said, if I thought I could get back on metro from a game, I’d be much more likely to go to a game during the week when the subways close earlier. I think the 400 number is the 400 who trusted metro to stay open. If the Nats payed for every late game, attendance and ridership might go up.
In truth, Peter Angelos was given the sweetheart deal when MLB decided that the Nationals would be permanently hosed by the Orioles’ TV network.
Upon reading the title: Not sure if comment on DC street grid or comment on DC crime rate…
har har har; outside northeast and southeast across the river (which, for demographic reasons, are not favorite sons), DC is one of the most overpoliced cities in the world. as far as the street grid, i don’t even know what you’re getting at…it should somehow be more logical than a hub and spoke system divided into quadrants? please advise.
The crime rate in DC is actually pretty low. It was awful in the 80s and 90s but the city has changed a lot since then. Crime is not a problem here, unless you cross the Anacostia River.
One factual error in this post:
Metro closes at Midnight only on Sunday through Thursday. On Fridays and Saturdays, Metro is open until 3 AM. These also tend to be the best attended games, along with Sunday day games.
Fixed. Thanks.
This is dumb. I don’t think the Nationals should pay for this either. The Metro is a business, whether it’s government owned or not. You have customers wanting to use your service. Figure it out.
If you need to charge some extra fee for the late night service, do it. This is an excellent business opportunity for the Metro to grow its ridership and increase loyalty. Really dumb on Metro management’s part if you ask me.
That said, even if I think it’s dumb of Metro, the Nationals need to get this sorted. If it means dropping some cash on the Metro, they should do it.
Metro has no need to increase their ridership. It’s already near capacity and crowding is a big problem. I imagine ridership growth is something Metro might fear more than welcome. Fares are also the highest in the country, as far as I remember.
Why would Metro care to increase their ridership by 500-1000 fans at $60/person? Thats like saying the Yankees should pay $30 Million/win in free agency since they have money (of course they did do that with A-Rod’s contract, but I digress).
It kind of seems to me like people are jumping the gun just a bit on this whole issue, considering that the Nationals haven’t even officially clinched a playoff spot yet (although a wild card berth should be a virtual lock).
Assuming that the Nationals do make it, nobody knows with certainty yet what days and times their games will even be scheduled. They could very easily end up playing only one or two day playoff games in the District, making the whole issue moot.
My experience leaving gnats park was running into a guy who says:
I just got out of jail, you got some money for the metro?
I always wonder what happened to all those nice people that they kicked out of the neighborhood to build that ballpark? Perhaps they are just living in the metro.
This article is about Nationals park, which is really nice. You should try going there instead. I think you’ll find the experience much better than what you’re describing at this “gnats park” place. The only people I encounter on the way to Metro leaving Nationals park are crowds of baseball fans and a few street vendors. Going to dozens of games over the last few years, I’ve never encountered anything like what you describe, and I take Metro to every game. I’ve never been even remotely fearful of anyone on the way to or from the games. Except perhaps a few of the Phillies fans…
the best is pups at the park night, which is just a delight.
Its really not that nice of a park. They coulda done so much more with it.
I don’t really get it. If each of the trains they send are filled to the limit (Which is probably much more then the average train they send), doesn’t it make sense for the metro to send more trains? Eventually they would find a way to make it work, give the union some discounted tickets and pay a small reasonably fee.
This article fails to take into account that nobody but Nats fans could give a crap whether they can get home after a game. If they can’t buy a damn car, let them walk. It’s the price they pay for living in a ridiculous city.
I live in a major U.S. city and I own a car. I work in the central business district of that city. I take public transportation to work. I must be very stupid for doing so because, you know, people only take public transportation because they can’t afford a car. Traffic, parking, and certainty about when you will arrive at your destination play no role in decisions about using public transportation.
Looks like we agree on all points.
You’re a badass, Everdiso. But seriously, a person who has to travel into the heart of a major U.S. city on a daily basis would be very stupid not to take public transportation if it’s a viable option relative to where he lives. It’s cheaper, faster, less stressful, so forth and so on.
Ridership needs to be far greater than 500 to justify extending service at a cost of 30K/hr. Seems like they could contract with private transportation companies for less.
Ride your bike. There’s free valet parking and you can get home anywhere in the district within 30 minutes.
I’m one of the fans who takes Metro to the game. DC is one of the few cities in the world where it’s possible to live without a car, and considering the congestion and rate of accidents on our streets, a lot of us simply prefer to use Metro. Even if I did own a car, it would be really silly if myself (and every other fan) had to drive our cars to the ballpark and find parking just to make sure we could drive home if the game went late.
But this seems beyond petty of the MLB. Not only was Nationals Park built with city funds but the city made a gift of surrounding real estate to the owner of the team for development. It was a giveaway of city resources to the MLB’s wealthiest owner. The Metro station not only brings thousands of fans to every game and enables the Nats to sell tickets to a lot more fans (like myself), it also makes the residential real estate surrounding the ballpark itself more valuable. The Metro does nothing but provide value to the Nats’ owners, and that’s probably why they’re willing to pick up the tab. Why should the MLB get involved?
It is beyond petty for the MLB to insist that DC and its taxpayers should handle the fee for extra train service. It is outright selfish and liable to hurt baseball in DC if the issue were seriously bungled in the postseason.
“DC is one of the few cities in the world where it’s possible to live without a car…”
You meant “the US”, right?
Not surprised WMATA would gouge our area sports teams to the tune of $62 per rider. I used to Metrorail from Alexandria to Nats Park all the time but got tired of dealing with “track maintenance” delays on game days. Logic would stand to reason that working on the rails during sporting events (like Opening Day for Pete’s sake!) would cause problems for riders, eventually resulting in people seeking other means of going to and from the stadium. I even e-mailed WMATA about the problem a few years back and received a very diplomatic reply that really didn’t resolve anything. Well now I drive pretty much everytime, especially when I’m with a group. $10 parking is the way to go and I know the ins and outs of getting to the stadium and back home by car. A cab ride from Alex to DC would probably cost me $30 ONE WAY, which is not an option. If WMATA had decent management and used common sense it would work out for everyone but this thought has eluded “the powers that be” so far. I don’t think they have a clue about the rider’s perspective.
Metro should be open until 2:00 AM anyway, because thousands of service workers are just getting off in all three states where the Metro provides service.