Welcome to The Weekly Journey - your two-minute journey through the world of mobility and beyond. Use it to stay informed, find a new go-to source, or just have a peek inside how we think. Brought to you by the team at Journey.
Transit tactics for stadiums and events.💡
Journey's Dan Berez and Nelson/Nygaard's Larry Gould joined the ACT Event TDM Roundtable hosted by Lauren Mattern and Veronica Jarvis this week to provide a deep dive on how to make transit work for stadiums and events. Key lessons include:
The biggest gains come when TDM and transit planning are aligned. That’s where you see results that defy local mode splits and land use expectations.
Transit excels at moving large numbers of people without traffic—but it struggles when everyone moves at exactly the same time. That “peak of the peak” is where systems break.
Events are one of transit’s best opportunities to win new riders, but they don’t behave like everyday service.
However, transit planning for events follows the same reality as peak service: limited vehicles, limited staff, and no margin for waste.
The goal isn’t just moving people—it’s making transit the best option from start to finish, so the trip doesn’t detract from the event itself.
Three basics drive success: make transit the easiest option, protect it from congestion, and make paths to it clear and obvious.
The job is to make sure transit doesn’t break—and to make it the obvious choice before and after the event.
Transit is flexible and inflexible at the same time. Union contracts, safety requirements, and local work rules vary city to city and shape what’s possible.
Queueing matters more than ever in an event context. Venues empty faster and loading everyone at once isn’t realistic. Queues should be planned in advance, kept linear, and designed to keep people moving. Reduce friction where possible—especially fare payment on the way out.
Plan, plan, plan (especially for egress) – to create an environment that is easy to manage Coordination with police is critical. Good planning reduces the need for enforcement and makes crowd management easier for everyone.
Wayfinding matters when riders have choices; otherwise, the site plan itself should make movement intuitive.
Staging on-site: Successful events require real on-site operations, not just vehicles. A pile of buses isn’t an operation. You need space for staging, boarding, crews, dispatch, and rider flow.
Use the venue to communicate with riders—clear instructions on how to leave are in everyone’s interest.
ACT members, tune in for the next session on Feb 25th with LJ Nassivera of the New York Mets to hear about their mobility investments. Non-members, we'll be sure to share the highlight right here on future editions of this newsletter.
A few interesting things. 🧠
🚨New Transit Alert! Global Edition: Yonah Freemark is back with this annual review of new transit projects opening across the globe in 2026.
🏘️ Transit-Oriented Zoning Reform: Amy Dain at the Boston Indicators Project provides an update on the MBTA Communities law and its effect on housing permitting so far.
🚌 Transit Priority: The MTC just adopted the Transit Priority Policy for Roadways, which provides a framework for transit priority implementation in the Bay Area. Check out more about the policy and accompanying resources here.
🚸 Crosswalks: An analysis of average crosswalk distances for 100 cities across the United States. Co-author Marcel Moran provides an overview.
The job board. 💪
Upcoming events. 📅
Lauren hosts the Association for Commuter Transportation Book Club. Next Wednesday, February 4th at 2 PM eastern, the book club will host Ruth Miller of Jawnt to discuss The Smart Enough City by Ben Green. Ruth will explore how TDM professionals can thoughtfully navigate both the promises and the limitations of smart city technologies. ACT members, feel free to join whether or not you get a chance to read the book! Not an ACT member but curious? Reach out to Journey as we often can offer a couple of comp entries to our partners.
Lauren co-hosts the Chicago City Builders Book Club with our friends at Arup. The book club starting 2026 by diving into the Chicago classic, Nature’s Metropolis by William Cronon. Join their upcoming discussions, whether or not you’ve read the book or missed part one, on:
Wednesday, March 4 at 6 PM
Wednesday, April 15 at 6 PM