CEO Update: Comic-Con

Good morning everyone!

Every year Comic-Con seems to get bigger. And every year, MTS personnel step up to the challenge and provide an ever better experience for our customers. I want to congratulate our entire team for a job well done! Here are some of the highlights:

• We’re still working on ridership numbers, but experience tells us that we likely set another Comic-Con ridership record. Last year, Comic-Con generated over 381,000 extra trips. If we increase ridership by 5% as we did last year, we’ll push that total to more than 400,000!
• Over the course of the weekend, we put out 913 extra trips!
• Best of all, there were NO major delays and NO major breakdowns. Even malfunctioning doors were fixed quickly.
• Our Ambassadors and Security teams did awesome jobs. During the heaviest periods, thousands of people were crossing our tracks and loading our platforms. Once again, the were NO accidents. There were NO major security issues.
• Operations did a fantastic job anticipating and planning for heavy demand. Trains on the Sycuan Green Line were turned at Gillispie Field. This kept trains more evenly spaced, virtually eliminated late trains and led to smooth passenger flow at our Convention Center area stations.
• This year, we even ran a few four car trains and, when demand was even too much for 7.5-minute frequency, we pushed spare trains into service.
• Reports are that more and more people are taking advantage of SDCCU Stadium parking. Reports had as many cars parked there as some Aztec football games.
• Adding to our optimism for a ridership record are reports of heavier than normal ridership on the UC San Diego Blue Line. And Sunday, which usually quiets down, was almost as crowded as Saturday and the crowds were still big until 8 p.m.
• We sold out of commemorative passes at the Transit Store and we sold 18,026  passes on Compass Cloud (1, 2, 3, 4 and 5-day passes), our mobile phone fare app. That’s 30% more than last year!
• We had 50 Comic-Con related advertising wraps this year. Another all-time record! And this year we had interior wraps, a first for the agency. They looked awesome. Every in-service train going by the Convention Center was wrapped.

If you have time, take a look at this video that marketing put together to highlight our hardworking Ambassador team.  \\sdmts.com\MTSIT\Global\MTS\Marketing\Videos\2019\7.19.19_Comic_Con_Ambassadors. This captures Comic-Con action on Thursday.

Once again, thanks everyone for your attention to detail and for once again proving that we are the country’s finest transit system!

Paul