The downtown Denver Broncos celebration last week led to a huge boost of ridership for the Regional Transportation District.

The district’s entire bus-and-rail system rose an unprecedented 28 percent over the agency’s typical weekday travel — a drive powered by Broncos fans who wanted to avoid traffic congestion on streets and highways as they made to the celebratory parade along 17th Street and Broadway and a rally at Civic Center Park.

On an average weekday, RTD logs about 320,000 passenger boardings trains or buses, but that number surged to 409,000 on Feb. 9 for the Broncos celebration, including trips on 16th Street Mall free shuttle and the Free Metro Ride. It was the largest one-day ridership total in the agency’s 40-plus years of service.

Light rail boardings soared 82 percent on Feb. 9, with RTD recording more than 140,000 train boardings versus 77,000 on a typical weekday.

“With 1 million people converging on downtown it was anything but a normal business day, and we met the numerous challenges through the hard work of all of our RTD service providers,” said RTD interim general manager and CEO David Genova.

The previous light rail record was during the Democratic National Convention in August 2008, when the agency reported as many as 90,000 daily passenger train boardings, which was up from the average of 65,000 boardings per weekday at the time.

Meanwhile, the bus boardings the day of the Broncos parade and rally edged up 10 percent systemwide, with RTD logging 221,000 riders, which compares to about 200,000 on an average weekday.

RTD suspended its 16th Street Mall ride service for several hours so fans could walk freely around the parade route area. Even so, ridership on the popular route, RTD’s most heavily traveled, increased by 13 percent when 48,000 people used the service compared to about 42,000 on a regular week day.

Monte Whaley: 720-929-0907, mwhaley@denverpost.com or @montewhaley