What Seattle Can Learn From New Jersey’s Superbowl

72 Replies to “What Seattle Can Learn From New Jersey’s Superbowl”

1. Excellent post. Now: what is your thinking about why the authorities 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?

   Mark Dublin

   1. Or is it a natural assumption in New Jersey that people who can afford a $50 bus ride are less likely to carry explosive pressure-cookers than people who can only afford a $10 train ride, or walk? Like Osama bin Laden was poor?

      Mark

      1. Nobody that can afford a $2000 superbowl 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.

   2. One lesson here is that private transportation providers can be a weak link in the security system. Public 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 perimeter around the stadium site, and some have to pass through 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.

      1. 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 path to the stadium. This would save a lot of time, while ensuring that the security checks are done prior to boarding.

      2. Continuing this line of thought could quickly lead to paranoia. As Benjamin Franklin said, “Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.”

      3. The paranoia, is yours, Mr. Reddoch. We’re talking about a sporting event, not a police state.

      4. 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?

      5. And you, Mr. Brent, were the one to suggest multiple security checks.

      6. J., I suggested heeding the decisions of the professionals.

         Nathan, what are these freedoms that are being eroded? You seem to understand that attending the Super Bowl is not necessarily one of them.

      7. @Brent: It’s very common for professionals to place concerns in their fields above those in others, and even within their fields to fall into echo chambers of questionable practice. For example:

         – 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.
         – In computing, security professionals (largely self-appointed) have designed many security mechanisms that themselves became security risks.

         Of course, it’s common for experts in different fields to disagree 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 and business 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 when we see that so many of the systems they’ve designed, though they may have had a positive impact on security, 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.

   3. I don’t see how one can have this discussion with one photo and some ridiculous anecdotal data.

      We know that everyone converged on a single destination, but a question might be, from what starting points? 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?

      1. I was thinking the same thing. It is not at all clear how someone 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.

      2. Not true.

         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.

         Secaucus Junction was built in 2003. It is a modern facility. The lower level platforms were recently extended to handle the crowd spikes associated with the new Meadowlands spur.

         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.

         It would be like temporarily moving all airport security to between Link’s escalators and ORCA readers.

         (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 nightmare to reach for the first forty years of its existence. Yankee Stadium and Flushing Meadows host hundreds of gigantic events every year without trouble.)

2. The location of our stadium – within walking distance of all the Downtown hotel rooms and at a hub for all our regional transportation (Amtrak, Link, Sounder, Ferries, Buses) – would seem to make hosting a Superbowl a lot easier. The Meadowlands is essentially on a cul-de-sac of the NY/NJ transit system.

   1. So you’re saying that transit doesn’t work, and the only way to do anything is to brute force it by cramming all facilities into as small amount of square acreage as possible?

      1. No, on the contrary, transit does work, but when you have a large enough mass of people converging on the same stadium at the same time, it is not reasonable to expect any one mode of transportation to handle everyone.

         Buses, trains, walking, and biking, are the 4 modes of transportation that are the most space efficient and most scalable. We need all 4.

      2. I’m saying a stadium at the intersection of multiple transit modes is a better idea than one out in the middle of nowhere with one transit access in, so I would actually support a stadium right near Downtown.

      3. I think putting our stadiums in an industrial area (SODO) is the perfect compromise between convenience, mobility, and urbanism. If you put large venues too far out, like Foxboro Stadium, then everyone drives, and that sucks. But if you put venues too close in, like Seattle Center, then you end up destroying the urban fabric of the neighborhood it’s placed in, and that sucks too.

         I eagerly await the day when KeyArena and Memorial Stadium are knocked down, the replacement venues are built in SODO, and the street grid is reconnected through the Center. ;)

      4. Seattle Center is actually sited horribly for an entertainment venue, not because it’s too close in, but because it’s so awkward to get to. Since I come from the Eastside, the access is horrible; there is no direct transit and navigating the 520 to Mercer weave always makes me feel like I’ve dodged a bullet.

         The stadium district is really just at the fringe of the industrial area. It’s adjacent to downtown and as Kevin R said, the main advantage is being in an area where several transit modes converge. At the same time, roadway access is also pretty convenient.

      5. The fastest route to Seattle Center from the Eastside is probably to take the 255 or 545 to Stewart and Denny, and walk from there. It’s about a mile, but still faster overall than trusting the 8 or going out of the way to 5th and Pine to transfer to another bus. (You can also walk from 5th and Pine, but the distance is only negligibly shorter than from Stewart and Denny).

      6. asdf: There used to be a neighborhood where the Seattle Center grounds currently are. It was called the “Warren Avenue slum”, but let’s remember that the “slum” label was one of the strataegies that folks like Robert Moses and John Hynes used to demolish well-functioning urban neighborhoods and replace them with suburbs and highways. If Jane Jacobs had been living in Seattle at the time, there would probably be 23 more blocks’ worth of Lower Queen Anne, and there wouldn’t be a huge break in the urban fabric between LQA and South Lake Union like there is today. It certainly wouldn’t be a slum anymore!

      7. Was it really a slum even then?

         The photos I have seen of the area before construction started show some pretty grand houses that appear to be in pretty good condition. None of the ones I saw in photos show anything like, say, North Portland was 20 or so years ago, where half the buildings were boarded up.

      8. asdf, I generally take an I-90 bus when I want to get to Seattle Center, usually the 554, ride to the end, then walk from there.

3. I’m guessing the primary reason why walking to the stadium was not allowed is that the stadium has virtually nothing within walking distance except for some warehouses, industrial buildings, etc. The nearest single-family home is nearly 2 miles away, with narrow sidewalks and an awful freeway overpass to contend with. Even if walking across the perimeter were allowed, in practice, nearly everybody doing it would have been traveling as close as possible to the event by car, then either renting parking from one of the nearby industrial businesses or getting dropped off by a friend, taxi, Uber, or whatever.

   The organizers probably felt that all this extra car traffic would cause congestion near the stadium, which would impact the ability of the event buses to provide timely service. That, and it might have been more difficult to charge $150 per car for parking or $50 per person for an event bus if off-site parking were available for a mere $40 a half-mile away.

   If the Superbowl were one day hosted in Seattle, the situation would be completely different. Lots of out-of-towners would be staying in downtown hotels within walking distance of the venue, especially since for an event like this, people are generally willing to walk a lot further than normal – for the Superbowl, you could probably extend the meaning of “walking distance” to at least 2 miles each way (assuming of course, that some form of buses would still be available to the disabled).

   Another thing that is very important for large events is to not neglect bike parking. Anytime, the roads and car parking are at capacity and transit is overwhelmed, biking becomes the unquestionably fastest way to go. Temporary bike parking for large events is extremely easy to set up, and way more compact than car parking. It can also be located right next to where the security people are standing to deter theft.

   1. I don’t know about other sports, but there is a lot of bike parking set up at Sounders matches, and it is maxed out.

4. Staffer’s note: This piece was submitted before Wednesday’s Seahawks victory parade. Thanks for the report, Jack!

   33,000 fans overwhelmed the single train line leaving the stadium site, but was it for more than just a couple hours? That’s smaller than the number that used Link to go home Wednesday night, and a shorter wait.

   One difference is half the people leaving Sunday had just watched their favorite team get demolished (or should I say, self-destruct, from Play One.). That’s tens of thousands of already-bitter fans comingling with tens of thousands of other happy, buy many of them drunk, fans. The ability of tens of thousands waiting for a train Wednesday, all having just had a great time, to put up with a wait of one-four hours to get onto the train was more tolerable simply because the wait at the station was part of the party. If we think our ability to host a party of a million people downtown and not have any violence shows we are ready for the drunken tens of thousands of two bitter rivals on the same transit system, we would be getting overconfident. Given that a few hundred visiting fans tend to use Link for every football game, and some of the baseball games, that’s a start.

   Do we have adequate hotel capacity to host the Super Bowl? I’m not sure about that, but getting East Link open first would help. Get 2024 inked for Seattle to host the Super Bowl, and the Bellevue Chamber of Commerce will do all it can to get East Link open in 2023.

   1. I was thinking we should get the 2022 Superbowl and use it as an excuse to get state money to accelerate East/Lynnwood Link construction.

      1. +1

      2. Might such a strategy also create an incentive to take design short-cuts and other cheap-outs, just to deliver the stations on time?

      3. Brent,

         Maybe some “cheap-outs” would be good to dial back the regal palaces that ST builds for its train set. Link as built –except for the three stations actually within the MLK right of way — is more like BART North than a Light Rail system.

      4. One of the first cheap-outs could end up being the Northgate pedestrian bridge. I’ll take that over the Super Bowl.

      5. Northgate is North Link, which is scheduled for completion in 2021. No cheap-outs required.

5. It’s all about the security perimeter. Trains have high capacity and deliver people in big groups; security lines move slowly and steadily. People on foot normally have the ability to spread out over space, but when all the space people normally spread out into is turned into no-man’s-land, you get overcrowding in the limited places people are allowed to be.

   People get in and out of games in greater numbers than at the Meadowlands all over the world without incident. The main difference this time was an ill-conceived security plan. That’s what has to be changed next year. Allow people to spread out on the grounds near the stadium and a decent chunk of the problems go away.

   1. “Security perimeters” are usually a mistake anyway. Especially for people DEPARTING the event — seriously!

6. It’s time for Seattle to build a new stadium somewhere in the exurbs on a train terminus but with freeway access and parking. Just like the Meadowlands and Santa Clara for the niners.

   1. I would assume you are being sarcastic, but when it comes to you, Mr. Bailo, I’m never quite sure.

      1. nah, he always wants everything in the exurbs.

      2. As does New York City and San Francisco, apparently.

      3. Yup, New York hates is in-city stadiums, which is why it rebuilt Yankee Stadium and Shea Stadium/Citi field in-place, and moved the New Jersey Nets into downtown Brooklyn.

   2. Every time I journey between Rainier Beach and TIB on Link, I cringe at how we’ve built miles of track that doesn’t have any station and how that low density, warehouse area could accommodate a more productive use (recognizing that there are flight path and ownership constraints, of course). Would this area be an example?

      1. That stretch of track was built to accommodate at least one (Gateway Dr/S 133rd St), possibly two (Airport Way S) infill stations.

         Obviously the Airport Way station would serve land that currently has a productive but necessarily sprawling use.

         S 133rd St is awkwardly located, and any effort spent building that area up would probably be better spent in other places (like north Seattle).

      2. Good to know about those potential infill sites, Kyle.

         Since the original post was about redevelopment from some other land use into stadiums (like what was done in Santa Clara), my post was intended to query about future land use and redevelopment potential for a sports facility – and not about merely adding a new station to serve existing development.

      3. It could probably use a station along that stretch but it would have to be an all-at-once TID style development.

         So, a planned urban village that on day one has apartment buildings, shops, facilities and a a LINK station.

   3. Showare Center, the Tacoma Dome, and the Everett Events Center aren’t enough?

      You should love Showare Center, it touts its free parking as a selling point.

      1. Tacoma Dome actually could have decent access for an event like this. Everett isn’t good, but there is transit access there too.

         To properly reproduce the mess at the Meadowlands, the best place in Seattle would be Magnuson Park. Then, destroy the Burke Gilman Trail and rebuild the railroad line over it.

         Then, when an event happens, set up a completely illogical and tangled set of traffic patterns to get people to this location, with a large number of transfers happening at the University LINK station and Golden Gardens, at stations that otherwise have no actual function as only a few scattered dozens of people normally would go to the area near the arena.

         Or, perhaps a better analogy, put the stadium in Port Orchard. That way, you only have a certain limited number of ferries that can go there, and to a ferry terminal that has no use other than when there is an event at the arena. Anyone driving gets to take the long road around through the Tacoma Narrows. Normal traffic patterns would have to get altered across the region as ferris go missing and are repositioned from the San Juan Islands all the way south to Anderson Island.

   4. Santa Clara is an exurb?

      Somebody should tell them soon…116.000+ population, ninth most populous city in the San Francisco Bay Area. It’s next to the 3rd largest city in CA (10th in the USA). SF is only the 4th largest in CA.

      The stadium is smack dab in the middle of the convention hotel area and next to Great America amusement park. Down the street from the airport and between multiple highways. Has a train station and a separate light rail station; a 2nd line within 1.5 miles and transferable.

7. Any assessment of how much expense and disruption this piece of profit-making corporate entertainment cost people who had nothing to do with it and desired less? And comparison with our own experience of a couple days ago on this point?

   I’m especially talking about ordinary people subject to discipline including termination for being late for work. “Three trains passed me up” isn’t just sulking over an inconvenience. Also context of a certain county in the Pacific Northwest so financially constricted that it has had to eliminate bathroom breaks for its transit drivers.

   I’m starting to like the Moses Lake idea. With the high-speed rail service we need anyway, Seattle would still get its share of celebrants on their way to and from, without crippling shock to our own transportation.

   Also wouldn’t mind seeing every event like this put to a public vote of affected citizenry, requiring two thirds to pass. Exactly the same as for every public thing we presently really need.

   But would also like some discussion of fact that-exactly like an unforeseen disaster, and like an individual human being- performance under pressure requires above all the best possible condition in everyday life and work.

   Seven hundred thousand people or seven hundred…a system running a mile and a third of fully-reserved right of way should be able to tell light rail passengers they can’t stay aboard a train through a turnback at Westlake.

   Mark

   1. This is every reason not to put venues like an arena in the midst of a commercial business zone.

      Having it in the retail-warehouse areas makes more sense than overloading the standard routes.

      1. As is often the case, you’re half right. :)

         One of the most important benefits of mixed-use development is more efficient use of scarce resources. An 8-lane freeway that’s used mainly by rush-hour commuters is essentially useless for 22 hours of each day (and all weekend). An arterial street in a central business district, with lots of jobs but no housing, is idle for nearly 16 hours each day (and all weekend). An arterial street in a residential neighborhood, with lots of housing but no jobs or retail, is empty for at least 40 prime hours per week. But in a mixed-use neighborhood, the streets (and buses and trains) are always in use: by workers during the day, and by residents at night. And since it’s just as likely for people to be heading east or west, north or south, the streets (and buses and trains) are used in both directions.

         So in general, I totally agree that the best place to put any given type of development is in a neighborhood that doesn’t have much of it. Put more housing in downtown, between Stewart and Jackson, to make the area more vibrant and safer when office workers go home. Put more offices in Belltown and Capitol Hill and the U-District to fill up their streets during the daytime.

         However, this type of analysis would suggest that an employment center is a *great* place to put an entertainment venue. Office buildings are in use from 9 to 5 on weekdays; venues are used in the evenings. In other words, they’re complementary, not competing.

         The real reason not to put stadiums inside central business districts is that stadiums are huge. The combination of Safeco Field and CenturyLink Field is nearly as big as the entirety of South Lake Union. This megablock effectively represents a neighborhood unto itself, and it’s one that no one will ever go to unless a game is happening.

         Industrial areas are pretty much perfect for stadiums. You get the same mixed-use benefit: people go there to work during the day, and to have fun at night. But large stadiums are at the same scale as large warehouses and factories, and so there isn’t any street life to be destroyed.

      2. @Aleks: I’d suggest that an industrial area where people go to have fun at night is an industrial area in transition away from industry. A lot of stadiums have been built in American cities in old inner-city industrial areas where industry is in decline so land is cheap enough to blow on giant parking lots. But the biggest growth in active American industrial areas is rural or on the rural-exurban fringe and has been for decades now.

         With condo development spreading into the CenturyLink Field parking lot, you have to wonder whether the stadiums are sitting on what could have shot up like Chicago’s South Loop.

      3. Al,

         What you’re arguing is basically that SODO is too well-situated to be wasted on industrial land. And you may be right. But the need for really large buildings, and activities that people don’t want to live next to, isn’t going away. We’re talking about an area that has been zoned for industrial use basically since forever, and that has never had a real street grid. And the amount of underdeveloped industrial land within Seattle pales in comparison to the amount of underdeveloped residential/commercial land.

         Basically, I’m arguing that turning SODO into a real neighborhood would be a heck of a lot more expensive and invasive than infilling development in the parts of Seattle that already have the right foundations. And so, given that we have this industrial land, I think it makes sense to put/keep the stadiums there.

      4. To be sure, if this area was a really thriving center of job-intense industry, then it would be serving a really important purpose. Instead land values are too high and pollution impacts too close to population centers for much new industry to open shop there, and commercial offices and entertainment are coming in. That doesn’t happen to such a great extent in a really thriving industrial area.

         If what we have in 20 years is a district full of commercial office buildings (Hi, Starbucks!), nightclubs, various retail and restaurants, stadiums, and a handful of remaining industrial and warehouse operations that still define the area in people’s minds, and are still able to block the kinds of street improvements appropriate for the other uses (and for people going through), I think that would be a disappointment. It would mean we’d allowed industry to mostly be priced out without planning the infrastructure necessary for what came after. Aurora has a sort of similar problem: it’s an important street with all kinds of businesses on it but lots of outdated interchanges and a few stubborn land owners that stand in the way of basic needs like sidewalks. If we’re going to allow industry to be pushed out of SODO then we’d better push out the idea that freight is the only transportation that matters there along with it.

      5. Industry is not always large, it can be small too. We need to preserve an industrial base in Seattle because we may need it more in the future, if long-distance shipping gets cut off due to wars, fuel prices, or economic restructures and we have to start manufacturing more locally. Cities like San Francisco and Vancouver that have turned their industrial districts into condos and shopping have made themselves more dependent on a narrower job base and more vulnerable to economic swings. In one era people said, “We can’t have an economy with everybody pushing paper and selling each other insurance”; in another age they said, “You can’t east floppy discs.” We’re already chipping away at the industrial district with the housing complex next to the stadiums and the onetime plans for a third stadium.

         I could see SODO as a solution to the housing crunch except… we need to think before jumping into it. Because once the industrial land is gone, it’s gone, unless we knock down houses to recreate it, and we’ve seen how difficult it is to knock down just a few houses to make dense station areas.

      6. @Mike: The condos are very visible, but they’re being built on top of a stadium parking lot. They aren’t “chipping away” at any industrial activity that’s going on now, or that has been recently.

         I absolutely agree that we should be cautious about abandoning industrial districts. We’re currently zoning SLU in ways that make replacement of the remaining industrial and warehouse buildings there very attractive; we’re not doing that in Interbay or SODO, for better or worse. Both Interbay and SODO retain some large industrial and warehouse operations along with some boutique manufacturers. But the biggest incursion in terms of land area isn’t residential towers, it’s retail — auto-centric big-box retail, along with some storefront cafes and small restaurants along the most important streets (though the streets really don’t have much pedestrian activity). In SODO I’m talking about the giant Home Depot and Costco stores, nightclubs, takeout restaurants and cafes, and stuff like the Starbucks HQ and Living Computer Museum (SODO is big and has a lot of stuff in it!). In Interbay, the Whole Foods/Petco complex, restaurants and cafes around Dravus. In Ballard this sort of thing is exemplified by Fred Meyer, Louie’s Cuisine of China, to some degree the Ballard Blocks, and the formerly industrial/commercial building that now houses Bevmo and Bikesport (part of the building was torn down for the retail transition to expand parking).

         None of these non-industrial uses require a transportation network that’s as hostile to walking and biking as these places have, but these non-industrial uses are taking over already, while in the meantime industrial interests fight against walking and biking improvements at every turn. The overall result is that even as we improve non-private-car access to established neighborhoods, it becomes more important for a wider group of people to access the “industrial” areas daily, and they remain auto-dominated. It means that we tell ourselves on one hand we only need one good bike route through SODO, going north-south, and that legible east-west transit through SODO doesn’t matter, while on the other hand we let the area develop in a way that makes it less true every day.

         We are currently eroding our industrial areas whether we plan to do so or not. So I think we have to make a choice. Plan neighborhoods around decent urban street networks to house the retail and office uses (some large retail and offices are fine, but they don’t need such massively pedestrian-hostile conditions!) along with housing, or actually commit to preserving industrial land. Either would be better than what we’re doing now.

8. While I believe they would have to increase the capacity of CenturyLink to qualify for the Super Bowl (probably with temporary stands), there won’t be a million people coming down to the stadium for the game. There won’t be more than about 75,000. It wouldn’t be much worse than any other game, Seahawks or Sounders.

   Your best bet will be the First Hill streetcar, getting on at its northern terminus.

   1. Right. 700,000 show up for a parade, but no one would come to the Superbowl. That’s rich.

      1. I don’t know about you, but I don’t generally find that going and standing outside the stadium without a ticket is a very exciting way to take in a sporting event. Your mileage may vary, of course.

   2. 115,000 if you open Safeco and use the big television.

      1. +50,000 more if you open up a big screen at Husky Stadium. Maybe give Husky Stadium to the AFC champs’ fans and Safeco to the NFC champs’ fans. That still leaves us a few hundred thousand seats short of overwhelming the transit system like Wednesday.

      2. How many people would come to watch the Seahawks on a big screen at Safeco Field, if that option was made available for every game, home and away? As a market trial, Mr. Allen could sell season tickets to watch the Seahawks at Cinerama.

      3. Paul Allen doesn’t get to override the NFL’s exclusivity agreement with the TV networks.

         Honestly, the best thing that could happen to sports viewers would be unrestricted online streaming. People like watching the game from home.

9. How much screening do ticket-holders have to go through for a regular Seahawks game? Do they screen for bombs or just alcohol?

   1. Bag-checks and, as of last season, hand wands at both Seahawks and Sounders games.

      1. And the bag limits were the same as for the Super Bowl.

      2. The first match the wanding was implemented was a bottleneck disaster. Thousands were delayed getting in due to insufficient security staffing. When the boos got loud enough, the plan was abandoned, and everyone was let in. All remaining matches had adequate security staffing, albeit most of them were temps with no training in actual security.

         Testing of human throughput might have helped New Jersey realize they weren’t ready, and then they could have come up with a plan to spread out the checking and have a bunch more lines.

10. I see two major strategies to add to the list for special events:

    1. Build tail track capacity to handle more train sets for all rail systems before and after special events. For example, consider how San Francisco Muni holds train cars in the tail track in Mission Bay, just blocks from a Giants game. The cars are put into special service before the game, and are quickly rushed out after the game to handle exiting crowds. The current SODO Forest Street facility should be able to accommodate this for U-Link/North Link train sets when events happen. Why not also have separate tail tracks (if not an additional platform) from both East Link or South Link that are near the stadium area for special events that would work similar to the one in San Francisco?

    2. Create a special “Events Planning” transportation agency that both coordinates things in advance, as well as manages a real-time system to adjust for problems. An organization like this could put a number of strategies together than could make the system serve the public much better. Then we could have things like a shuttle system with one end having bicycle valet service, for example. We could have buses drive onto extra peak ferries that would also carry pedestrians and bicyclists, and not load private vehicles onto them. We could have a real-time app that rates the crowding on vehicles or at station platforms so users can know how bad the experience will be while still on the street — and make adjustments in their schedules or paths to avoid the aggravation. A coordinating agency could provide a rough guess as to how much additional service is needed, and could make adjustments during events or in planning for upcoming events. The agency would be funded by a ticket tax to the events or by parking charges for those that drove.

    These two strategies alone would make Seattle be more attractive for hosting major sporting events. I think that it would sell Seattle better, especially when competing with other cities that also have rail systems.

11. There are a few problems at the Meadowlands and the service that it currently gets from New Jersey Transit that aren’t mentioned here.

    One of the huge problems with New Jersey Transit are those awful new multi-level cars. They only board from two tiny doors at the ends of the car, and all except about 4 seats are only accessed by stairs which are slow moving with crowds. It is a bit like going back to the 1970s, when New Jersey Transit insisted on using old long distance cars with vestibules at one end only for commuter service. They’re OK for long distance, but for commuter service or some special event where you want people to board and detrain quickly? A miserable failure.

    I know the reasons they decided to use those cars, but the fact remains they are quite terrible in actual service, for the service for which they were intended. They were purchased as a cheaper option than running longer trains (which would have required expensive platform extensions) or increasing track capacity (which would be very expensive considering the primary destination is at the other end of the Hudson River Tunnels). However, the cheapest option is usually cheapest for a reason. These things take about twice as long to board and detrain as the equipment they replaced. Furthermore, the equipment they replaced tended to be Arrow III electric multiple unit equipment with reasonably fast acceleration and braking, while these things must be locomotive hauled. In the end, they have had to add 15 minutes or so to schedules with the new equipment.

    About 99% of the commuter agencies on the planet use broad side doors that go right into a main passenger compartment rather than into a vestibule first. This is done for a reason.

    Seattle’s biggest capacity limits are at the Sounder platform, where the usable space becomes very narrow due to the raised wheelchair platform. It isn’t quite the same as what happened in New Jersey, but the resulting crowd congestion is similar. BNSF has two through freight tracks over which to operate excess width loads, so adding these crowd constraints on platforms that are not on the through main line seems unnecessary. At some point, it would be good to ether get very low floor equipment compatible with the regular platform height (such cars have been proposed for the USA, but never built) or try to get BNSF to approve a wider raised platform area (since the main line doesn’t go by the platform anyway at the Seattle station) so the constriction isn’t as bad.

    The best capacity for regional passenger rail is when trains go through the busiest stations, rather than turning at them. There are some legacy terminal stations that are not through stations (Boston, Chicago, London and New York all have a few). However, such stations are by nature limited in capacity over a station where trains can simply go through the main terminal without having to be turned or reversed. The New York stations, as well as some of the Chicago Transit Authority end terminals, sort of deal with this by having the terminal yard past the station. This allows a train to enter the terminal, detrain all the passengers, and then immediately move forward into the terminal yard without interfering with the train behind it. Despite a dozen or so stations in the New York / Newark area that prove why stub-end terminal stations are a really bad idea if you need capacity, they went and built the atrocity at the Meadowlands anyway.

    An example of what to do in Seattle would be to run run Sounder trains through to a new station somewhere near Fisherman’s Terminal. There happen to be locomotive service facilities there anyway, on a line that used to cross the ship canal and then enter Fremont. It could become a decent tranfer point for those headed further north, or transfer to bus 31 to get to Fremont and other points.

    1. I don’t think Sounder would be all that important for a Super Bowl crowd. The Super Bowl crowd is an out-of-town crowd coming from hotels. There are some hotels near Tukwila Sounder but more downtown and near the airport.

       1. True enough, under the current operations. If there were a good way to get from the hotels around the airport to the Tukwila Amtrak / Sounder station it could be a different story. Under good conditions (and remember this is a Sunday) a hotel shuttle should be able to manage this trip in about 10 minutes or so.

          Why not run a shuttle directly to the stadium from the area near the airport? Because roads around the stadium are going to be quite congested, and this should offer a good alternative to the roads.

          Why not use LINK? Because it will be quite crowded as well.

12. Pingback: What Seattle can learn from New Jersey’s Super Bowl | In Brief

13. Good, but the S.B. Isn’t an international event, not unless the NFL has the next use in another country. ;)

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