Super Bowl Rail Service

This is how I look at yesterday's operation. People may agree, people may disagree but here it is:
30,000 passengers divided into groups of say 2,000 per train (10ML has 1350 seats) equals 15 trains. 15 trains departing Meadowlands 10 minutes apart from each other due to infrastructure limitations, equipment limitations, loading and unloading factors to name a few comes out to be 150 minutes of service to clear out the 30,000 people. 150 minutes is 2 1/2 hours...pretty much how things went last night. Not too much more that could have be done in my humble opinion.

Thank you for such an objective post. I think it really helps to look at the numbers to put things in perspective. If any railroaders have an opinion on the accuracy of these numbers it would be really interesting to read.

http://www.lackawannacoalition.org/inde ... cle&id=260" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
An excerpt...

A final problem is the NFL itself. The NFL- and other sports operations- are famous for setting up huge events for the ‘benefit’ of regions they take place in. The region that it takes place in is largely required to pay for the improvements needed. And the sports operator then collects most of the money that comes in from hosting the event, giving little benefit other than prestige for the area hosting the event. This was especially egregious, since the event was hosted in and largely paid for in New Jersey, and the pre game events were hosted in and largely beneficial to New York City.

It was the NFL that largely commandeered the parking lot. It was the NFL that charged outrageous amounts of money to park near the stadium. It was the NFL that prevented rotating taxi, limo, and bus service from serving the game affordably. It was the NFL that set up the pricing structure that so favored NJ Transit Rail as the way to go. It was the NFL that largely organized this into what is being hashtagged by some as #TrainGate. And it was New Jersey and NJ Transit that got the blasted with the blame for everything that went wrong because of it, and has to clean it up.

millerm277 wrote:

ThirdRail7 wrote:The operators you list typically do not move this amount of people to a specific event utilizing trains that necessitate transfers. Your political rant aside, there is really only one problem as far as I can see and you mentioned it.

You paid for the parking pass, which turned out to be a good decision. There could have been a blizzard and things could have gone the opposite way. The bottom line is you were able to use your vehicle and not everyone was afforded the option. The trains were mangled, yet the roads were clear.

I'll disagree a bit there. The game has a fixed number of people attending, there are only so many seats in the stadium. They reduced the available parking for the event drastically and knew exactly how many parking spaces were going to be available. With the other draconian rules (not being allowed to drop people off from your private car), clearly the rest of the audience was going to arrive by mass transit of some form, there weren't other options.

The game may have had a fixed number of seats, but that didn't necessarily apply to the nearby events and festivities. I wonder how many of these people went to the festivities and not the game. For the record, I know a few people that were doing just that. That being said...

millerm277 wrote: When your ridership estimate is off by 3x for the big event you've been planning for years, I don't believe it's a "hindsight is 20/20" situation where a promise to learn from mistakes is sufficient. I am sure NJT Personnel on the ground did the best job they could with the circumstances they had, but some people in the back offices planning the event ought to be out of work after this.

if you digested the rest of my post, I didn't know who was behind it, but I'd like to once again refer to the latter part of my post:

ThirdRail7 wrote: I doubt this will ever happen again, but if it does I hope everyone remembers my creed: It is about a BALANCED transportation network. All methods of transportation should work TOGETHER to move people. Favoring trains over the road is no better than favoring roads over trains.Jacking people up for Teterboro fees and parking fees and bus fees or limo fees in order to push people to the trains should not be considered in the future.

the people that are ultimately responsible according to Fanrailer's post should be held accountable:

Fan Railer wrote:http://www.lackawannacoalition.org/inde ... cle&id=260
An excerpt...

A final problem is the NFL itself. The NFL- and other sports operations- are famous for setting up huge events for the ‘benefit’ of regions they take place in. The region that it takes place in is largely required to pay for the improvements needed. And the sports operator then collects most of the money that comes in from hosting the event, giving little benefit other than prestige for the area hosting the event. This was especially egregious, since the event was hosted in and largely paid for in New Jersey, and the pre game events were hosted in and largely beneficial to New York City.

It was the NFL that largely commandeered the parking lot. It was the NFL that charged outrageous amounts of money to park near the stadium. It was the NFL that prevented rotating taxi, limo, and bus service from serving the game affordably. It was the NFL that set up the pricing structure that so favored NJ Transit Rail as the way to go. It was the NFL that largely organized this into what is being hashtagged by some as #TrainGate. And it was New Jersey and NJ Transit that got the blasted with the blame for everything that went wrong because of it, and has to clean it up.

The point of my post was people were forced to the rails. They were given few choices, each one more expensive than the next. Even if NJT had an idea that 3 time the amount of people were showing up, you can only squeeze so many trains into the tracks. You can only leave so many trains in Penn Station which is typically jammed up on weekends anyway. You can only hold so many train out of Secaucus and the Meadowlands. People will only move so fast through the station.

They should have allowed more vehicle access and that is the lesson I hope has been learned.

That and you shouldn't gouge people.

Apparently the Pennsylvania Railroad dealt with a similar situation in 1904. Here is a comment from the New Jersey Railfan Forum Princeton Branch and Freight topic.

Re: Princeton Branch and Freight.

Postby Diamond_D7 » Thu Jan 08, 2009 8:08 pm
I am reading a very new book called "Iron Rails in the Garden State" by Anthony Bianculli (look for a review in an upcoming issue of Railroad Model Craftsman). The book is fantastic, including numerous details on the Princeton branch I did not previously know.

According to the book, in 1904 for the Princeton-Yale game, the PRR brought in 30,582 passengers to the station at Princeton on FOURTY TWO special trains. At that time the branch was single track, with three extra tracks in Princeton for unloading of special trains.

Because of the heavy demand for these football trains, in 1905 the PRR double-tracked the line and added a 24-track yard for unloading/loading and storage of these specials. Included in the original proposal, but not implemented, was a high-bridge over the canal to eliminate the need for a swing/draw bridge which would have been 51-feet above water level! (That would have required a major grade realignment, but what a sight that would have been!)

lirr42 wrote:The ride home is going anything but smoothly:

"run better"

OH, the irony!!!!!

I have no sympathy at all for any of these passengers. It's a huge venue and people should expect to wait their turn.

And yea, at shea/citi that walk really does thin the crowd out quite a bit, though seating on the platforms would be nice.....

25Hz wrote:though seating on the platforms would be nice.....

Seating on platforms designed to get large amounts of people out of the station in short amounts of time?

lirr42 wrote:

25Hz wrote:though seating on the platforms would be nice.....

Seating on platforms designed to get large amounts of people out of the station in short amounts of time?

Yep. Kinda painful on the feet to walk all that way out of the venue only to stand for 20-30 minutes. I'm definitely not the only one who feels this way either. Subway is even more cramped with no guarantee of seat all the way back into Manhattan rocking & rolling around, but i think the subway station has seats, and it even has bathrooms, only problem is subway, seats or not, takes much longer.

In the possibly hundreds of Mets games I have attended in my life I likely waited no more than 10 minutes for a train following any particular game. These stations should have designs that encourage people to move down the platform. Having lazy people seated on benches getting in the way of everything is not a way to achieve that.

NFL to review train station fiasco - ESPN

"...The New York/New Jersey Host Committee underestimated by half the number of riders who would use the train to get to the game, and those 28,000 strained capacity and set a record for single-day traffic on the line..."

http://espn.go.com/new-york/nfl/story/_ ... super-bowl

Yup, when things go wrong..., it's time for a witch hunt!

I was hoping that the Super Bowl would be a showcase for the ability of heavy rail transit to move large number of people quickly and comfortably. I guess not.
The trip to the game was messed up partly by bad security planning, and in the post 9/11 world, security rules and not much can be done about it, at least in the short term. But how about the return trip?
For comparison, I'd like to know how long it takes to empty the stadium after a regular game, for a person who drove to the game, and for a person who took the train.
I have no idea...

I thought srock1028's post was fair and insightful, but it made me think about baseball games I have gone to at Shea and Yankee Stadium. I almost always took the subway. The one time I drove to Yankee Stadium was my last time--a nightmare both in terms of time stuck in traffic and in terms of the tough driving to get out of there.
By subway it did not seem to take so long to empty the stadiums. It certainly didn't take 150 minutes. (OK, 82,000 is more than I ever saw at a baseball game, but seems to me that 50,000 got out in less than an hour.)
I think the real problem is that having to run the NJT trains on 10 minute headway makes for a guaranteed bottleneck. I guess the question of what the minimum headway is depends on how closely you can space trains, and also on what happens when the people get off the trains. I would think that in terms of pure train spacing they could run them every 3 minutes but I would like one of the railroaders here to give me the right number. I think they should run some trains from the stadium to Hoboken. Maybe these trains don't stop at SEC--I don't know if that would just be more confusing or if it would help. I would think that if some trains did not have to stop at SEC to load, more trains could be run. From Hoboken the people could take trains, buses or PATH. If the event is on a weekend, with Amtrak's advance cooperation in halting single tracking perhaps more trains between SEC and NYP could be run after the event.

People had to wait for a train......... Where is the story here exactly?

Sorry, as someone who uses transit to get around, including biking and walking miles per trip, absolutely do not see what the huff is all about. Under-estimated demand for a one-off event with no possible comparison due to limited availability of transit at every other super bowl i've ever heard of seems like par for the course...

I'm not sure what patrons were expecting, to walk out and onto a train with no wait? And going in you had security..... sadly this would have been a huge target, and we will never know if something was prevented due to all the heavy screening and security (thankfully).

I took the train to and from levittown and DC (amtrak 30th and back) meeting someone all ready on the train from trenton coming from bayonne (so 3 more trains than i) and back from Obama's inauguration.... I purposely booked a return on one of the borrowed NJT sets, well that didn't happen. You don't see me complaining and acting like a brat, we got there on time and we got home safe, and we had a great time. It was a lot more crowded than i thought it was going to be... and a one off event with emphasis on taking train.... sound familiar? There is only so much they can plan for, and unless some specific thing comes to light about deliberately limiting shuttle capacity i'm gonna have to say "so what?".



And as for "lazy people" who want to give their feet a break.... im also speaking for dozens of others who come all the way from my area and along the NEC to go to games..... it's a REALLY long time to be on your feet if all the trains you end up taking are packed SRO, also not everyone leaves after the game, lots of people leave during the 7th inning stretch so they don't get home at 1-2 am. There is plenty of room on that platform, but this is about NFL and super bowl, so i guess i'll truck on over to LIRR forum and talk bout it there.

I believe part of this logjam came about because of limited options for the fans. It was either buy a parking pass for $150, shell out $51 for the NFL Fan Express bus, or the train. This probably favored people to choose the train, but perhaps too much. For the return trip, NJ Transit sent 100 buses to the stadium headed to PABT to put a slight dent in the crowd; however, it was simply too much for the infrastructure to handle at once. I am very familiar with Rutgers home games and know it can take up to 30-45 minutes sometimes waiting in line for a bus, but almost 3 hours seems unfathomable (even with the expected longer wait time). If the Super Bowl will be held in NJ again, I think more fine-tuning will be in order (i.e. maybe provide more affordable buses). To be fair, other Super bowl venues have also had woes of their own, but overall I think NJT did a good job with what they had.

I think the NFL deserves part of the blame for this. Here is a comment from http://www.nj.com/super-bowl/index.ssf/ ... again.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;:

And by the way - the reason there were transit problems was becuase of congestion. The NFL forced basically only two modes of transportation to the game - either the NFL sponsored Fan Express bus or NJ Transit train., The did not allow hotel shuttles, the only had 10,000 parking spaces, they did not allow people to be dropped off at the stadium and they didn't even allow NJ Transit buses to drop off at the Meadowlands like they normally do.

So it isn't that NJ couldn't handle the Super Bowl - it is the fact the NFL cut off all normal modes of transportation that most people use to get to and from the stadium