In February 2014, the NFL Superbowl game was held at MetLife Stadium in the Meadowlands complex in East Rutherford NJ. Since the stadium has direct rail service by NJTransit, game attendees were urged to take the train rather than drive.
NJTransit had estimated that 12,000 people would use the train; by the time the game had started, 32,000 had arrived by train. Despite several hours to react, NJTransit failed to add additional trains to address this increased ridership. After the game, some riders had to wait 3 hours for a shuttle train to Secaucus. The next day, there was the usual finger pointing and blame dodging, but NJTransit was under extreme pressure from the Christie Administration to reduce operating costs, especially overtime.
This past Sunday evening, the WWE had a major event at MetLife Stadium, with attendance in the 75,000 range. Many of these attendees came by train. The event was scheduled to end around 10:30 PM; NJtransit had 6 trains scheduled for shuttle service.
The event lasted until about 12:30 AM. NJTransit could operate only 3 trains, since the other crews had hit their Hours of Service limit. Many riders had to wait in the rain for up to 3 hours for a ride.
This can't be blamed on Christie; he's gone. This is an embarisement to the current Murphy Administration, and shows just how deeply ingrained the management problems are at NJTransit. I don't understand how train crews with limited service hours can be assigned to events with ending times carved in jello. Am I missing something?
We can recognize that there is a crew manning shortage. However what will the governor do? If I was a responsible for this fiasco management person I would be very worried for my job. Its time for Management be taken to the woodshed.
What is the
I've been following this on nj.com. Oh boy, deja vu all over again.
We live in Virginia now but we do like to keep track of what's going on up in New Jersey now that Lady Firestorm and I aren't up there keeping an eye on things.
I can't wait 'till next month's issue of "Railpace" to see what Tom Nemeth has to say about this! I wish I'd kept his Hurricane Sandy and Superbowl issues, they were classic!
At least my Lionel New Jersey Transit rail set does what it's supposed to!
PS: We were in NJ when Hurricane Sandy hit and followed all the action first-hand, the drowned NJ Transit equipment, the people scrambling for open gas stations, Smart-phone junkies panicking looking for a place to charge their phones...
Lady F roared "How @#$%&+& stupid can Jersey Transit be not to move the engines and rolling stock out of a flood zone?!"
Fun-fun-fun! Wouldn't have missed it for the world!
For an update on the Meadowlands mess, here's Paul Mulshine's column from todays nj.com. Mr. Mulshine's a fine writer and a pungent observer of the NJ political scene who pulls no punches. There's a link to his NJ Super Bowl fiasco column of several years ago as well.
https://www.nj.com/opinion/2019/04/the-meadowlands-mess-fans-stuck-in-the-swamp-thanks-to-a-missing-link-mulshine.html
I don't know why I still care what goes on up there anymore. Let's just say I do and let it go at that.
Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account.