New Jersey Transit billed last night’s game as the first-ever “mass-transit Super Bowl,” suggesting the trip to the game would be “a snap” via its rail link. If that could be taken to mean that people riding the train would themselves snap, then call the promise fulfilled. Between oppressive crowds and heat on the way to the game, waits of hours, in some cases, to leave, and a few crowd-related medical issues along the way, things could have gone better for NJ Transit and the people relying on it to whisk them to and from Met Life Stadium. However, as the New York Times suggests, they could have gone worse, too, had the game been closer.
The overcrowding started on the way to the game, when the New York Post reported that “by 4:30 p.m., a full two hours before the game, 27,000 passengers rode trains from Secaucus to the stadium — breaking the previous record of 22,000 set for the 2009 U2 concert.” Compare that to about 8,000 who usually take the service for Jets games. A few passengers collapsed in the overheated Secaucus Junction station. At one point, the crowd began chanting “AC, AC AC,” the Times reported. And that was just on the way to the game.
Getting home would prove to be an similarly difficult ordeal, with some passengers stuck in the stadium until after midnight. But as the Times noted, Broncos fans tired of seeing their team so heartily dominated started filing out early. “People were mostly orderly, and the situation would probably have been worse if the game had been closer and a lot of Denver fans had chosen to stay to the end,” the Times reported. Many of those that did stay, such as Seahawks fan Mark Duffy, had victory to buoy them. “Being Super Bowl champs, you can put up with a lot,” he told the Times.
Hopefully, some commuters will be able to take that kind of solace this morning as they brave the current storm, which is predicted to drop five to eight inches of snow.
