Sports

Updated: How to Get to the Giants' Ticker Tape Parade

Caltrain will add more trains during the Wednesday morning commute from the South Bay to San Francisco to accommodate Giants' fans, Halloween revelers and daily commuters.

San Francisco will hold a ticker tape parade and civic celebration in honor of the San Francisco Giants on Wednesday, and if the occasion is anything like 2010, you're going to want to get there in ways other than your car.

The parade in honor of the Giants' World Series victory against the Detroit Tigers will start at 11 a.m. at the foot of Market Street and continue to Civic Center Plaza.

To get to the parade, mass transit options are strongly suggested.

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Caltrain is expected to add more trains Wednesday morning to accommodate the thousands of fans who want to attend. In 2010, Caltrain carried an additional 25,000 to 30,000 riders to the Giants parade and celebration in downtown San Francisco.

That year, Caltrain ran nine extra northbound trains and six extra southbound trains. Fans, and commuters, bought 26,000 tickets that day. By comparison, sales on a normal first Wednesday of the month was about 9,000 in 2010.

Find out what's happening in Los Gatoswith free, real-time updates from Patch.

And BART is expected to add longer trains to its route, as it did in 2010.

If you want to know what you might experience if you head to San Francisco, we've included some images from the Giants' 2010 parade.

The Giants swept the Tigers, winning the series in Game 4 in Detroit Sunday night with a 4-3 victory. It is the team's second World Series win in three years.

Caltrain has announced that it will add extra trains Wednesday to accommodate the thousands of fans who want to attend the ticker tape parade in addition to the approximately 20,000-plus commuters on an average weekday. 

The railroad will suspend its regular southbound afternoon schedule to help move crowds out of San Francisco more efficiently.

According to Caltrain spokeswoman Christine Dunn, fans and commuters alike "should just go to [King] Station because trains will depart every 15 minutes and stop at every station."

She added that if the trains are overcrowded, Caltrain will deploy trains, already located further south along the corridor, in advance of the arriving trains from San Francisco to pick up commuters at other stations.

There will be no bullet trains southbound from San Francisco.

The most important thing for people to remember, she emphasized, is that "things will be different, trains will be crowded, but people should be patient and have a good time."

Three trains will continue to go to Gilroy as usual, but they may be slightly off-schedule.

Caltrain will also sell—beginning Tuesday at 5 p.m.—tickets and parking permits for Wednesday from ticket vending machines at any Caltrain station, but warn parking spots may not be available along the route. They recommend riders purchase day passes to avoid long lines.

According to Caltrain, the railroad set ridership records on the day of the Giants Parade in 2010, with an additional 37,000 fans taking the train to San Francisco to take part in the historic event. Average weekday ridership on Caltrain in September was 50,821.

—Bay City News contributed to this article


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