More than 11,000 riders used Metro’s rail system to access Nationals Park for each of the team’s first two play-off games.

About 11,400 people went through the Navy Yard station for Friday’s game and about 11,500 people on Saturday, according to Metro spokesman Dan Stessel, who cautioned that these weren’t official figures but estimates. Metro arrived at the numbers by seeing how many people rode the Metro during the two to three hours after the game and subtracted the number of people who used the Metro during that same time frame last weekend, to get Nats-specific data. (It’s worth noting, of course, that Saturday’s game was an 18-inning behemoth, and some fans left early.)

These figures represent a slight decline from the 2012 playoffs—-and that’s back before the Silver Line existed.  Twelve thousand people rode the Metro to Nats stadium for Game 3 of the playoffs in 2012—-that was on a Wednesday—-and 12,300 rode the Metro to Game 4—-a Thursday. That Friday, Game 5, 11,800 people took Metro to the Navy Yard station.

In 2013, the Navy Yard station saw an average of 9,229 passenger boardings during an entire weekday, according to Metro data.

Once again this year, the Nats did not offer to foot the bill if any of its games ran after Metro’s standard closing times. Metro requires someone to put down about $30,000 to keep the trains running for each extra hour in case it’s needed. This year, American University offered to pay the money.  Depending on how many people use the Metro after hours, they will get at least some of the money back.

So far, there has been no need to keep the Metro open after-hours.

Photo by stevebott via Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0