Taken with Transportation Podcast: On the World Stage

Director of Transportation Julie Kirschbaum (left) joins Mayor Daniel Lurie at a World Cup kickoff event in the Haight Ashbury.

San Francisco once again is on the world stage now that the FIFA World Cup 26™ is in town. And we’ve got World Cup fever on the Taken with Transportation podcast.

Let's go San Francisco

We sit down with San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie in our new episode, “On the World Stage,” and ask him how the city got ready for the tournament.

“We’ve been spending months and months preparing,” Mayor Lurie says. “San Francisco and the Bay Area know how to do big events, and we are fired up.”

Does the mayor have any watch party plans? “I’ll be out and about,” he tells us. “And I’ll be taking transit. I’ll be taking Muni.”

Fans gather at Thrive City to watch the opening FIFA World Cup 26™ match.

Let transit take you there

Speaking of Muni, the system can help fans get to the matches at San Francisco Bay Area Stadium (Levi’s Stadium) in Santa Clara.

“Muni has been working really closely with our regional transit partners, BART, Caltrain and [the] VTA,” says Tony Henderson in the episode. He’s the SFMTA’s major special events lead and says all the agencies want transferring to be as easy as possible. That includes getting to and from matches that start late in the evening.

“We will be running extra service at night to help connect from both BART and Caltrain to the Union Square and SoMa areas,” Henderson explains.

And he adds that putting these transit plans together truly is a group effort. “We’ve gone a level higher here in the amount of coordination …  to really make sure that we are serving people."

At the end of it all, one country will take home the FIFA World Cup trophy. (Photo credit: Unsplash) 

How to listen 

You can find “On the World Stage” and all our Taken with Transportation episodes at our podcast webpage (SFMTA.com/Podcast) and our YouTube channel. We’re also on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and other podcast platforms.