Salem Halloween 2022: How To Get To The Witch City On The Big Night

SALEM, MA — Salem officials have implored Halloween visitors to take public transportation to the Witch City for the better part of a month amid a historic influx of holiday tourists and a severe parking crunch.

On Halloween night itself, the MBTA is looking to make it easier to get to downtown Salem without driving into city limits with discounted tickets.

The MBTA will extend its $10 weekend round trip offer to Monday on the Newburyport/Rockport line for Halloween. The MBTA is also offering a $5 round trip ticket for those who park in the Beverly parking garage and take the train one stop — about a five-minute trip — into Salem.

For those who do want to get an early start to the spooky holiday, the Salem commuter rail parking garage will be open during normal hours. However, the garage on Bridge Street will close to both incoming and outgoing traffic from 6 to 11 p.m. so those who do arrive early had better be prepared to stay a little late.

Salem Mayor Kim Driscoll called this year's Halloween crowds "bigger than we've ever seen it before" at a Friday news conference pleading with tourists not to drive into the city during the final two weekends of the increasingly celebrated season.

"If you are coming to Salem do it by train, ferry or broom — but not by car," Driscoll said.

Salem drew more than 500,000 visitors in the first half of the month — including more than 100,000 during the second Saturday of the month alone as all municipal parking spaces filled up by late morning.

The city said there were 185,300 visitors downtown this past weekend — 41,420 on Friday, 99,720 on Saturday and 44,340 on Sunday. Overall, attendance is up 9 percent over 2021 at an estimated 699,500 people.

"We are a nearly 400-year-old city and we have roads that were built for horse and buggy more than they were for the number of people who are trying to arrive here by car," Driscoll said.

The MBTA said additional commuter rail trains will run for the final weekend of the month while the ferry had added extra vessel space for the anticipated crowds.

The full commuter rail schedule for this weekend can be found here.

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)