In less than six months, visitors from across the world will converge on Boston for the FIFA men’s World Cup. And while political and business leaders are calling it a boon for the city, a big question looms: Can the MBTA handle the job of moving thousands of soccer fans to and from the matches at Gillette Stadium?
The six-week tournament this summer will overlap with other big events, including the city’s 250th anniversary celebrations and Sail Boston 2026. The matter of whether the T is prepared for the onslaught of fans keeps coming up at meetings and in reports. But so far there’s been little disclosed to the public.
A key issue is transit to the seven matches at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough. The T has committed to move 20,000 passengers for each game, about a third of the stadium’s capacity, using the Foxboro commuter rail station that’s a short walk to the venue.
Erika Mazza, the T’s senior advisor for special projects, has said the amount of people the T needs to move per match is “at least four times more” than “for an Army-Navy game, for Taylor Swift. It certainly is much greater than what we do for regular concerts or Patriot games.”
To accommodate the influx the T is building a new, extended platform more accessible for everyone at Foxboro station. Construction started on the $35 million project last summer, and there’s little room for error. Transit officials expect the platform will be ready just a few weeks before the first match on June 13, when Haiti takes on Scotland.
If T officials or Gillette Stadium’s owners, the Kraft Group, have felt any sense of urgency around transit preparation for the games, they’ve kept it largely under wraps. The level of Gillette involvement came up during an MBTA board of directors meeting just as construction began.
“Do they have any skin in the game? Do they provide any money to this or anything like that?” asked Robert Butler, a T director and union executive.
Phil Eng, the MBTA general manager and interim state transportation secretary, said the Krafts did cover design costs for the train station. But it’s unclear if they’ll contribute more.
In response to Butler at that meeting, Eng said the station rebuild is not just for World Cup. He said the project will give the T “the ability to run, not only weekday service to Foxborough, but the ability to run event trains for future events allows us to actually provide even more service to the public.”
There are lots of other logistics the T and the agencies involved have to tackle — like how often trains will run on match days, where the big watch parties will be held and how the transit authority will handle safety.
Last month, MBTA police chief Kenneth Green told T board members, “We don’t have an update” on World Cup plans. “There’s too many unknowns right now, just so you know. Just in case you were thinking about it.”
A report on World Cup public safety and transportation preparation by the state’s Executive Office of Public Safety and Security last month pointed to “funding complexities” and “several key locations yet to be identified” that need to be addressed “before all planning and mitigation strategies can be outlined.”
A key location that hasn’t been identified is where fans who don’t have game tickets will gather. Organizers call these Fan Festivals, which feature large screens to watch matches, live music performances and other entertainment. Nearly two million people visited the Fan Festival in Doha during the 2022 World cup in Qatar.
More than a million soccer fans are expected to visit the U.S., according to figures cited by Reuters. The Boston Consulting Group estimates 450,000 visitors from nations across the world will come to the city.
The recent state report summed up the situation like this: With the soccer matches just months away, more needs to be done to “optimize execution.”
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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