I was thinking the same thing. It is not at all clear how someone who lived in New Jersey was suppos

The New York/New Jersey metro area is massive, with multiple transportation options that would make any transit wonk beam with pride feet, bike, notorious cabs, car services, busses, light rail, and heavy rail.  All proportionally allocated serving not just daily commuters, but also special events.  New York/New Jersey is so huge, hosting a major event like the Superbowl dominates one avenue, but walk two blocks away and you wouldn royal caribbean alaska cruise t know 50,000 people are partying behind you in the streets.
To get attendees to the site the word was put out: take the train or a fan bus, no cabs, no walk-ups, no tailgating. The NJ rail network is sturdy and capable, but confusing at the best of times.  There is no one-seat royal caribbean alaska cruise ride from Manhattan and most of Jersey, and while the transfer is doable royal caribbean alaska cruise it isn t glamorous.  Attendees were funneled into Secaucus where they were screened before transferring to a line to the stadium.  Queues backed up through the station to the platforms, leaving arriving trains royal caribbean alaska cruise unable to unload. People waited royal caribbean alaska cruise for hours, fights broke out, it was less than awesome.
Advanced tickets on chartered fan busses that left from several Manhattan locations were made available, and quickly sold out.  These one-seat rides were arranged by the Port Authority, staffed by volunteers and licensed drivers.  NYC police escorted these busses through traffic and into the Holland Tunnel where they rode lanes dedicated royal caribbean alaska cruise for the event to the stadium.  Average time from mid-town to the stadium was under 1 hour.
So how, with all of this infrastructure and planning, could thousands of people be left stranded for hours on platforms ?  The sweltering heat inside stations (we dressed for an Ice Bowl) caused some to panic and be overcome, requiring medical attention.  How could you not, with ticket in hand, simply walk to an entry gate and expect to get in?  Those to tried were turned away to a station to pay for a bus ride to the parking lot.  How could busses, with dedicated lanes, be the only sane transportation option?
The port authority made a decision early on to set a perimeter around the stadium so only attendees that had been through the public transport system got onto the grounds.  Once you were on site, to get into the stadium required royal caribbean alaska cruise a TSA-style empty-your-pockets, pat down, and wand scan.  The only item you could have was a 12 x12 x6 clear bag, and ours was searched twice.  Those who took the trains also had their own screening.  Busses royal caribbean alaska cruise had no screening at all.
After the game attendees queued up in long lines to get screened to get to platforms to take trains to Secaucus, and then queue again on sweltering platforms to take another train to Manhattan or wherever.   Bus riders returned to their drop off point in the massive and nearly empty parking lots, waited a few moments for their bus, and rode out with police escorts past the masses packed at the train station.  And no screening.
With the train option at less than $10 and chartered busses at a higher royal caribbean alaska cruise $50, NJ created a false economy.  Coupled with a large perimeter and no car or foot options for entry, those who didn t want or need to take the train or a bus were forced royal caribbean alaska cruise to take the train anyway.
And, as an aside, this is not a blanket endorsement for BRT.  Clearly, the reason royal caribbean alaska cruise busses worked was because they were underutilized, expensive, rode dedicated lanes, had off-board advance payment, and no security royal caribbean alaska cruise screening.
For Seattle to host the Superbowl, which our city should do as soon as possible in my opinion, a different approach would be required. royal caribbean alaska cruise  Not only would the pre-event royal caribbean alaska cruise dominate the city, but the venue itself is in city and would draw 100,000+ people to Pioneer Square.   We should consider the following transportation realities:
Don t deny any modes.  It won t be possible to put people on busses royal caribbean alaska cruise and trains only.  The crush of fans and media will be larger than anything we ve ever seen bigger than bumbershoot, bigger than WTO.  Find a more nuanced security royal caribbean alaska cruise stance than a large perimeter.  And don t be a hater on the tailgater (but maybe move them south of Holgate).
Don t do anything we wouldn t normally do on public transport, but augment instead.  Run special bus routes and charters with dedicated lanes from hotel districts and points of interest, add LRV cars and run more trains, royal caribbean alaska cruise add trained volunteers and SPD at all stations to move huge crowds through the system royal caribbean alaska cruise safely and quickly.
Excellent royal caribbean alaska cruise post. Now: what is your thinking about why the authorities royal caribbean alaska cruise put so much ugly and counterproductive coercion into making people use one mode? Any chance somebody in rail management didn t vote for Governor Christie?
Or is it a natural assumption in New Jersey royal caribbean alaska cruise that people who can afford a $50 bus ride are less likely to carry explosive pressure-cookers than people who can only afford royal caribbean alaska cruise a $10 train ride, or walk? Like Osama bin Laden was poor?
Nobody that can afford a $2000 superbowl royal caribbean alaska cruise ticket (or a $500 face-value superbowl ticket, plus several thousand dollars for luxury box season tickets to earn the right to puchase it), plus airfare and hotels, is going to have trouble coming up with another $50 for a bus ride.
One lesson here is that private transportation providers can be a weak link in the security system. Public royal caribbean alaska cruise transportation providers can, too, but trains are much more of a target for those who want to kill as many people as they can in the name of whatever-the-freak-is-going-on-in-their-deranged-minds, regardless of their religion or lack thereof. It would be helpful if the single point of screening could be pre-boarding, thereby providing a larger net of protection. But if the officials in charge say we need a secure royal caribbean alaska cruise perimeter around the stadium site, and some have to pass through royal caribbean alaska cruise two screenings, that s just going to have to be a condition for hosting the Super Bowl. Don t like it? Don t bid to host the Super Bowl.
In a situation noted above, you could solve it as follows: secure the entire perimeter of Century Link. The sounder shuttles could have security done prior to boarding the train, and have a secure royal caribbean alaska cruise path to the stadium. This would save a lot of time, while ensuring that the security checks are done prior to boarding.
I don t think Mr. Reddoch is being paranoid at all. What Banjamin Franklin was warning us about is happening now. Day by day our freedoms are being eroded, and the President is basically wiping his derrier with the Bill of Rights.
Back to Transit, I think this is a terrible idea to have the Super Bowl here. Who wants a ton of drunken idiots around, really? Why do we *need* to have it here? Is our tourism economy really in that bad of a state that we need to induce an artificial surge of people?
American highway engineers in the mid-20th century became obsessed with adding freeway-like elements like large signage, reduced crossings, and wide lanes to as many roads as possible in the interest of safety. This not only made these places unpleasant and impractical to walk, in many cases it encouraged people to drive faster, working against the original cause of motorist safety. We still build lanes and interchanges for higher speeds than we actually intend, largely at the request of professional highway engineers.
Planners around the same time decided highway expansion was necessary to handle traffic congestion; not only was this disastrous for the environment, it also didn t solve the congestion problem because of induced demand. But planners are still telling us to expand freeways.
Of course, it s common for experts royal caribbean alaska cruise in different royal caribbean alaska cruise fields to disagree royal caribbean alaska cruise on what s best because different fields attract people with different priorities, and studying a specialized field biases you to consider the concerns of that field over others. Labor experts royal caribbean alaska cruise and business royal caribbean alaska cruise experts might both have relevant opinions on minimum wage legislation, but would, on average, come down on opposite sides of the issue. We wouldn t trust either group blindly, we d ask them each to prove their cases.
We shouldn t trust security professionals any more than any of these other groups of professionals royal caribbean alaska cruise when we see that so many of the systems they ve designed, though they may have had a positive impact on security, royal caribbean alaska cruise have had clear and measurable negative impacts in other areas (e.g. time spent at airports, social justice in the case of increased racial profiling stops near the border). We should ask that security professionals explain their logic and prove their effectiveness.
We know that everyone converged on a single destination, but a question might be, from what starting points? royal caribbean alaska cruise How many using came directly from Manhattan. How many from New Jersey? Philadelphia? Long Island? Connecticut? Which lines NJ Transit, PATH, subway, LIRR, Metro North, Septa, Amtrak, Greyhound?
I was thinking royal caribbean alaska cruise the same thing. It is not at all clear how someone royal caribbean alaska cruise who lived in New Jersey was supposed to get to the game without going through Manhatten and back. Presumably, they would need to drive to Sacacuous station and pick up the train from there, but if they re coming from the North, it would be significantly out of the way. But, then parking becomes a problem they ve got a huge garage, but for something like this, it probably isn t big enough.
Secaucus Junction was the transfer point, as it is for all train trips to Meadowlands events, whether you re coming from the north, the southwest, or the city. On rare occasions, Meadowlands trains will continue to the Hoboken terminal. There are no direct tracks into Manhattan.
As Al Dimond says above, the decision to install temporary and strict security in the middle of the Secaucus complex , preventing the normal flow of crowds to their trains and backing the lines up onto the upper level platforms, is responsible for basically 100% of the clusterfuck that manifested.
(Of course, all of the Secaucus-retrofitting and spur-building only happened in the first place thanks to the John Bailo-ing of New Jersey and its sports facilities that made the Meadowlands a total nightmar