Seattle’s new NHL expansion franchise, scheduled to begin play at the renovated Seattle Center Arena in the 2021-22 season, does not have a name — Sockeyes, Totems and Rainiers are three of the 13 monikers under consideration — but it does have a strong mass transit policy.

The club will be the third in U.S. pro sports history — the NBA’s Golden State Warriors and Phoenix Suns are the other two — to offer fans free public transit to and from games. Easing traffic congestion, increasing access to mass transit for fans, and doing something positive for the environment are the policy’s three main goals.

Despite Seattle having a well-earned reputation as being one of the greenest cities in the U.S., greenhouse gas emissions spiked by six percent spike in 2019, with vehicle emissions being the largest contributor. Per Rob Johnson, NHL Seattle’s vice president of transportation, a former Seattle City Council member and a mass transit advocate, as quoted by Kristin Toussaint in Tuesday’s issue of Fast Company, “One of the best ways for us to reduce our environmental footprint is to get people onto public transit and reduce the number of folks that are driving.”

Even if being environmentally friendly doesn’t do the trick, Johnson hopes, per Toussaint’s piece, that “the idea of saving time and money — and maybe the opportunity to have a beer or two at the game without worrying about driving home or waiting for a surge-price ride share — will motivate attendees [to take mass transit]. He gives a hypothetical example: A fan coming from the Northgate neighborhood of Seattle might have a 90-minute trip to the arena by car, when accounting for freeway traffic, time navigating the garage, and then walking to the arena’s door. Plus, there’s the usually high price of parking near games and any tolls. The trip on public transit would be under a half hour (on the new light rail extension, set to open in 2021), drop you off right outside the arena, and cost nothing with your [game] ticket.”