Hundreds of thousands to descend on San Francisco to celebrate Giants

Probably some of all the above. Regardless of what it represents, though, Wednesday's parade and City Hall ceremony celebrating the Giants 2012 World Series championship in San Francisco will be a crowded, high-energy street party.

Experts agree that people planning to participate should carefully plan their trip to the city, because transportation will represent a challenge akin to winning six elimination games: do-able, but very, very hard.

The parade celebrating the Giants' sweep of the Detroit Tigers begins at 11 a.m. today at the foot of Market Street near the Ferry Building and will go straight to City Hall. Adjacent streets will be closed to traffic.

Published reports said that hundreds of people spent the night at City Hall before the 2010 parade celebrating the Giants' World Series championship that year, and authorities expected that to happen again Tuesday night. They also expect thousands of people to take a holiday from school or work today.

Many of the Bay Area's public transit systems are adding service to ease what is expected to be significantly higher traffic levels on highways and interstates leading to San Francisco. CalTrans provides updated traffic conditions for those routes online.

Hundreds of thousands of people will ride Bay Area Rapid Transit trains beginning in the early morning, flooding in from Sacramento and the east and south bay areas. In 2010, the San Francisco Chronicle reports, 522,000 people — 120,000 more than on a typical work day — took BART on parade day, and an equal or larger crowd is forecast Wednesday.

BART will follow rush-hour schedules throughout the day to get people to and from the celebration.

The BayLink Ferry system is adding eight departures from Vallejo specifically to accommodate people attending the parade, beginning at 7:05 a.m. today. The final special departure from Vallejo is at 4:30 p.m. Four special return trips are scheduled from the Ferry Building in San Francisco beginning at 12:45 p.m. and ending at 5:30 p.m.

To alleviate traffic pressure on the Golden Gate Bridge, the Golden Gate Ferry also has added runs on Wednesday.

The festivities will be televised beginning at 10:30 a.m. on Comcast Sports Net Bay Area.

IF YOU GO

The World Series champion San Francisco Giants will be honored today in a downtown victory parade starting at the foot of Market Street at 11 a.m. in San Francisco. The procession will end at the Civic Center.