A Super Bowl in Seattle? Link light rail makes the Emerald City a contender

Seattle Times sports reporter Geoff Baker, who now writes about the business of sports for the paper, has an article today exploring the possibility of Seattle hosting a Super Bowl at CenturyLink Field in 2020 or later.

Baker writes that there are several things the NFL looks for in a host city, and one of those is a decent transportation system. Metropolitan Seattle has long had awful traffic, but we’re addressing that by building a rail spine for the region… and that matters. Light rail is so important to making Seattle a contender for major events that Baker’s article mentions it not one, not two, but three times.

Reference one:

Throw in light-rail expansion, which could hook up the downtown to the University of Washington and create more potential Super Bowl event space, and the city should boast numbers with which the NFL can work.

Reference two:

Morton said the key to any successful Super Bowl is “walkability’’ and getting to events with ease. In Seattle, he added, visitors would be able to walk to the game and most events, or hop on light rail.

Reference three:

Seattle would host the big-revenue Super Bowl events. And many of the major infrastructure changes within Seattle — such as light-rail expansion — already have been approved.

We are on our way to having a light rail system that runs north to Lynnwood, east to Redmond, and south to Angle Lake in SeaTac. But we need more light rail. That’s why it is so important that the Legislature grant Sound Transit the new revenue authority it is seeking, so voters have the opportunity to strengthen our investment in mass transit in 2016 with a Sound Transit 3 measure.