the intersection of soccer and transit

one of my favorite things in life is taking the Metro to a DC United game at Estadio RFK (in Goffer's parlance). This is especially magnificent if it is one of those beautiful summer evenings in Washington, DC where you are finally getting a break from the mid-day heat and humidity.

Major League Soccer has a new team this year and it is good old Toronto FC. As part of the promotional push for their new team, Toronto has decorated one of its streetcars to honor Toronto FC. Awesome!

transit makes density possible

The New Wembley stadium opened in London on March 24, 2007 with a soccer match between the under-21 squads of England and Italy. When everything is finalized, the massive stadium will hold over 90,000 people. Even with this large number of spectators, there will be no general parking at New Wembley. What makes this density possible? Transit. During soccer matches, the stadium will be served by over 100 trains an hour. 3 Tube lines and 2 national rail lines serve the stadium, and have the capacity to transport a whopping 70,000 persons per hour. The stadium is also served by an extensive network of buses.

In other news, the Tube carried more than 1 billion passengers last year! The Mayor of London, Ken Livingston, maintained that this strong transit ridership reflected the health of London's economy: "This new record of one billion passengers shows the strength of London's economy and how crucial the Tube is to that economic success."

soccer: the bastion of American communists?

Steven Wells of the Guardian UK has the very interesting article about how communists and anarachists in the United States are passionate about soccer. In a portion of the article, he details a major game between anarchists and communists in San Francisco, where some people in the crowd were chanting: "You say you look to Mao for salvation? What about the Xinjiang workers' situation?!"

One thing Wells doesn't get into is that the American left tends to favor almost anything that is unpopular in the United States and popular in Europe. I myself often look to Europe favorably but this tendency should be noted and examined in detail.