A Rough Night for NJTransit

Last night the first ever Mass Transit Bowl hit the New York Jersey area.  New Jersey Transit was given the responsibility to transport tens of thousands of people to the stadium by public transportation and well, it didn't go so smoothly.

For the last month people going to the game were coaxed to use Mass Transit to get themselves there.  And, unfortunately for New Jersey Transit, they listened. 

The trouble started Sunday afternoon when a record 28,000 people tried to take the train to the stadium.  NJT's operating plan placed a heavy emphasis on Secaucus Junction.  By their plan, all passengers destined for the stadium, regardless of where they originated, would have to get off their trains, go through security screening at Secaucus, and then re-board trains that were headed to the Meadowlands.

A brief aside for those who are not familiar with how Secaucus Transfer is set up: at this location, the Northeast Corridor passes over the former Erie lines (NJT's Main, Bergen County, and Pascack Valley Lines, and Metro-North's Southern Tier (the Port Jervis Line to you young'uns)).  Before December 2003, these two rail lines simply passed over each other, with no way to get between them.  Passengers wanting to go someplace on the Erie lines had no choice but to board their train in Hoboken and ride from there.   The station is purely a transfer station, as there are no track connections between the Northeast Corridor and the former Erie lines at this location (so the name "Secaucus Junction" is a bit misleading).   The station consists of three levels, at the very bottom is the two platforms for the former Erie lines.  The middle level consists of the platforms for the Northeast Corridor, and the third and top level is the main concourse that connects the two levels.  Passengers can go between the two platforms by using the concourse on the third level.

But the majestic halls of the Frank R. Lautenberg Graft and Corruption Transfer Terminal were no match for the huge crowds that took to NJTransit.  28,000 people, almost twice what the host committee told New Jersey Transit to expect.

The security screening corals at Secaucus.
(Photo credit: @NJTransit)

At first there was major crowding in advance of the security screening area (which was located right were the infernal turnstiles at SEC are).  The TSA was in charge of the screening and things were very slow moving (proof that the TSA is best kept away from anything having to do with rail trouble).  Crowds jammed the long concourse leading up to the security screening.  At one point, the mobs continued all the way down the staircases and onto the platforms (to the point where outbound departures out of New York Penn Station were held for a few moments until there weren't people stuffed precariously tight on the platforms themselves).

Reports from passengers at the station also said that the station itself became incredibly warm due to the amount of passengers that tried to cram through the concourses.  NJT reported the air conditioning was cranked up to full blast, but it seems like it just couldn't keep up.

Some of the below photos taken from various Twitter users show some of the chaos on the concourse leading to the security area  (e-mail or RSS feed subscribers may have to view this post in their web browser to see the embedded photos):

@NJTRANSIT in reality, it was the most inefficient & hot transportation system I've ever been. We didn't move for 1hr pic.twitter.com/qrQutds5uv
— Milo Cardenas (@hhcardenas) February 2, 2014

Panic setting in for fans trying to use mass transit to Super Bowl. Wait is up to an hour pic.twitter.com/tNgtYViABN (H/T @Carlos_Herrera_)
— darren rovell (@darrenrovell) February 2, 2014

@NJTRANSIT Feeling like a prisoner at seacaucus station. Dangerously hot and no movement in 20 mins. #fail pic.twitter.com/3Fi7oumbiO
— Nell Ryan (@nellryan) February 2, 2014

People were squeezed together uncomfortably on mass transit getting to the #SuperBowl #SB48 http://t.co/gSiBK51CrB pic.twitter.com/sr2CWL6OQA
— NBC New York (@NBCNewYork) February 2, 2014

But the security clearing wasn't the only thing causing big backups at Secaucus.  Once the mobs got through the security screening (and those horrendous turnstiles), they hung a left and went downstairs to the lower level platforms to board their trains to the Meadowlands.

There were also huge backups there.  NJTransit was boarding one train at a time on track H and once one train was loaded, it was sent out and another brought in.  In anticipation of the event, NJTransit set aside quite a few (at least 7) sets of 10-car Multilevel trains (with cars robbed from Raritan Valley Line, disgruntled with the tossed Comet salads they got in return).  The MLV cars could hold as many as 150 people per car, or 1,500 people per train.

While Multilevel's do have a huge capacity, I personally think they are very slow to board.  The way they have the doors configured, you essentially only have two doors per car that can board passengers with the width of that door being half that of a normal door.  To get those 1,500 people to get through those doors, up or down stiars, and into seats for the 13 minute ride to the Meadowlands is easier said than done.

There were also pictures on Twitter of the immense crowding of the staircases down to the former Erie line platforms:

Lines up to an hour and a half at Secaucus train station to get to Super Bowl pic.twitter.com/FlsQNiUrs5
— darren rovell (@darrenrovell) February 2, 2014

Shame on the NFL for ever trusting New Jersey Transit. pic.twitter.com/AuL4VTPxsB
— Bart Hubbuch (@HubbuchNYP) February 2, 2014

In the end, while it was far from smooth, it appeared nearly everybody got to the venue before the start of the game--and, if NJT would be able to get everybody home without too much incident, they might be able to escape the huge media storm coming their way.

But, the return trip for many was far from "without incident."

After the Seahawks finished trampling the Broncos,  over 33,000 people showed up on New Jersey Transit's doorstep expecting a ride home.  And just like the Bronco's prospects of winning, NJTransit's prospects of getting through the night without any additional major scaring vanished very, very quickly.

Boarding at the Meadowlands Sports Complex station was incredibly slow, and this could be contributed to both the crummy design on the station itself and the fact that Multilevels take forever to load, as mentioned above.  There was a brief period where NJT was only loading one train at a time, but they later wised up and began to board two trains simultaneously.  Once one train was full, it pulled away, they began boarding the third, and another train pulled in to take  its place.

But this was not before a massive mob of people started to mass outside the entrance to the station.  Shortly after the game ended, New Jersey State Police instructed those still in the stadium and hoping to get on a train to sit tight inside and enjoy the atmosphere until crowding conditions improved outside.  There was even a brief period where police weren't allowing anyone to leave the stadium due to the huge mobs outside.

Fans leaving by train encouraged to enjoy the stadium atmosphere until congestion dissipates. pic.twitter.com/b8eyAVL2rd
— NJSP - State Police (@NJSP) February 3, 2014

The design of the Meadowlands Rail Station is not very good for boarding large amounts of people in short amounts of time.  The station consists of two platforms with access usually only at the southwest end of the platforms. From there, passengers are expected to evenly spread out along the length of the train and board peacefully and civilly using all available doors and moving down the platform to make room for others.  This operation, which usually stinks for regular sporting events where only a couple thousand take the train, was an absolute disaster when attempted with 33,000 people.

And the slow loading of passengers at the station seems to be what ultimately did New Jersey Transit in...people moved far too slowly and the clumsy Multilevel slowed them down even more (I am beginning to think that single-level Comets, while they don't have the extra capacity MLV's do, would have been better used due to the fact that they can be loaded much faster that MLV's, but I'm not one to 'Monday Morning Quarterback').  The track layout near the station limits capacity to some extent, but it appears to me that the slow loading was a bigger factor.

NJTransit reported that, as of 12:45am this morning, almost all of the 33,000 fans had been transported to Secaucus on trains, and things were starting to come back together.

There are still thousands of #SB48 fans jammed on the @NJTRANSIT platform trying to go home. #superjersey pic.twitter.com/XgVKaPfYAo
— Andrew Mills (@Andy_Mills_SL) February 3, 2014

25,000 people attempting to get on @NJTRANSIT home from the Super Bowl @PzFeed @BreakingNews pic.twitter.com/gaTyex0jxb
— Jay (@JasonTodddd) February 3, 2014

The mass transit Super Bowl everybody! It's a disaster getting out too @njtransit pic.twitter.com/At1WgF4SAN
— Tom Dowd (@TomDowd22) February 3, 2014

@sportingnews Security refusing to let fans leave stadium as @NJTransit is unprepared for # of riders using trains pic.twitter.com/k992rMSUIF
— Angry on NJT (@NJT_Commuter) February 3, 2014

The next question we must ask is why New Jersey Transit failed so miserably last night.  Ultimately, the answer to that was the fact that double or tipple the amount of passengers who were expected to take the train to the event actually showed up.  Now why the grave underestimation?  That seems to be the real troubling thing here.  The amount of people going to the event was fixed at 82,000.  The express fan buses were to carry 50,000 of those people to the stadium (and those sold out).  Furthermore, there were a total of 13,000 parking passes given out, and since walking-on to the stadium property was prohibited, everybody else that wanted to get to the stadium on the day of the game would have to come by train.

Rail was the only means of getting to the stadium that was not limited.  There was a maximum number of bus tickets to be sold and a maximum number of parking tickets to be sold, then everybody else was to come by train.  You would think knowing how many bus tickets you've sold and how many parking passes you've sold would allow you to get a pretty good hold on how many people would be taking the train with some simple subtraction:

# of seats in Stadium - # of people traveling by bus - # of parking passes = # of people on NJT

I do not know the exact numbers of all of those items above, it was reported that the 50,000 bus tickets were sold out, but I don't believe they managed to sell all the parking passes.  But while these numbers might not have been made available to the public, they definitely should have been known to the Host Committee, and when that subtraction problem turned out a number that was in the 20,000's, they should have known that NJT could not possibly handle that many people without major issues and they should have started to work on possible alternatives.

Fixing blame might be difficult for this one.  NJTransit did not perform as adequately as they were expected to, but if you told me that they would be handling 33,000 people coming home from the stadium I could have told you right there it was going to be a mess.  The Meadowlands Rail Line had a fixed capacity, and it was negligent of either NJTransit or the Host Committee (or both) to assume that it could be trusted with "everyone else."  It's a shame that the Meadowlands Rail Line wasn't designed to handle 33,000 people, but the fact was that by time the Host Committee became aware of the number of people that were to take to NJTransit, doubling the capacity of the line was out of the question.  At that moment, some sort of alternative should have been thought up and put into pace (something that did not involve either the Meadowlands Rail Line or Secaucus Junction--trains from Newark to someplace on the Main/Bergen County Line via the Waterfront Connection and West End might have been good to have, but who knows.

In the end, the amount of passengers that fell on NJTransit last night should not have been a surprise to either NJTransit or the Host Committee.  Somebody didn't do their math right and it added hours to the travel time of thousands of people.  The first "Mass Transit Bowl" was, somewhat expectedly, a disaster.  Trusting New Jersey Transit to get "everyone else" to the game was a bad enough decision to start, and they very simply did not bring their best game plan to the stadium last night.

Meanwhile, back on the ranch, the Long Island Rail Road got through the day almost perfectly, with only two notably late trains, both in the very early morning hours.  Other than that, the LIRR managed to play their part in the Mass Transit Disaster Bowl pretty well.