That said, it could have been worse. You could’ve actually been there.
The first outdoor, cold-weather Super Bowl was not only a nightmare for the Denver Broncos, who were pounded by the Seattle Seahawks 43-8, but also for the thousands of fans who waited in long lines hours after the game to board overcrowded trains heading back to New York City.
Organizers had dubbed the game as the first mass-transit Super Bowl and spent considerable effort urging fans to take trains or buses to MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. The message apparently took hold, as nearly 28,000 rode the rails from nearby Secaucus Junction. That far surpassed New Jersey Transit’s previous record of 22,000 riders in 2009 for a U2 concert, and nearly doubled optimistic pre-game estimates of 15,000.
But after the game ended, fans converged on the rail station for the return trip, clogging the platform as trains loaded and left when full.
“80,000 people coming out of a stadium and they’re all going into one train,” Dennis Luca, a Broncos fan, told NJ.com as he stepped in line to wait with his daughter and son in law.
The agency eventually opened a second platform to accommodate the overflow crowd. It finally took NJ Transit bringing in more than 50 buses to shuttle fans to the Port Authority terminal in New York City — almost two hours after Seattle completed its victory over Denver — to eliminate the long delays at the stadium area.
Sons of Franky Cabot 