"There are people on it all the time," Mackdanz said. "People ... take it every day out to the airport for work."
The figures haven't converted former Sen. Day.
"I should have called it 'the entertainment train,'" Day noted. "All these people are riding this down to ballgames. Big deal."
Brian Lamb, general manager of Metro Transit's bus and light-rail system, countered that passengers took 10.5 million trips on the Hiawatha Line last year. Most of them were on days without sporting events.
Roads and cars really don't work that well for events where 40,000 people both arrive and leave at roughly the same times.