Which host city had the best public transit?

As soccer made a splash in a handful of North American cities this summer, the cup spilled over into its host cities’ public transit systems.

Over the course of the tournament, more than 4 million locals and visitors opened Transit across host cities, answering Rate-My-Ride questions more than 600,000 times about how their transit system was performing during one of the world’s biggest mega-events.

So which transit systems rose through the knockout stage? And which ultimately took home the trophy?

Let’s start with a look at the teams themselves…

A quick note about Mexico: While the app includes Mexico City, we haven’t found reliable transit data sources in Guadalajara and Monterrey — so they don’t appear among our more than 1,100 supported cities and regions, or in this blog post. If you are a transit data geek who knows about GTFS in Mexico, por favor, escríbanos.

Mega-events put new types of strain, and a whole lot of high-profile pressure, on transit agencies. But they’re also an opportunity for agency staff to try new things, and work together in new ways to deliver top-ranking transit service.

Just like each national team, host city transit systems have spent years preparing for this moment: rearranging routes, preparing multilingual navigation, and procuring temporary buses — including Kansas City’s doubling of its regular fleet with 220 new coach buses.

While our hometown of Montreal didn’t host any matches, our Team Canada partners in Vancouver and Toronto did. In fact, TransLink and the TTC launched their very own Transit partnerships right before the tournament kicked off — giving us the chance to work with pros inside both agencies to prepare custom navigation improvements in time for the first match.

Inspired by the technological wizardry of Île-de-France Mobilités during the 2024 Olympics in Paris, we modified our trip planner to guide fans away from choke points not just before and after matches, but also around fan festivals — with our digital tools supplementing TransLink and TTC staff on the ground to manage the fan influx.

We also improved navigation in host cities by putting fan zones and important stadium information on the map not just in Toronto and Vancouver, but also south of the border for partner agencies in Kansas City, Seattle, Philadelphia, and San Jose.

And that was just the start — together with host city transit agencies, we readied even more kickoff-critical app features like:

• Special tournament-only fare payment options for ConnectKC26 in Kansas City, plus VTA and Caltrain in the Bay Area

• Automatic detour detection for TTC buses and streetcars (especially handy when thousands of Germans shut down your streets for their fan march)

• Transit’s web trip planner, powering directions on the websites of the TTC in Toronto and the official host committee in Kansas City

• Preview Mode, which helped riders get ready for ConnectKC26, an entirely new transit network during the tournament — with real-time information signs on the ground powered by Transit’s APIs

All that, plus special push notifications, in-app messaging, and communication materials for partners to guide regular commuters and first-time visitors alike — and, of course, those special Rate-My-Ride questions to give transit agencies a rider’s-eye view of the experience.

So, which host city transit system came out on top? The competition was fierce, but only one could take home the trophy…

Seattle is already one of the continent’s best soccer cities — now its transit systems get to enjoy the thrill of victory, too.