Monday, February 3, 2014

The Government Versus the Private Sector: Super Bowl Chaos

Met Life Stadium was packed for the Super Bowl, just like it almost always is during a regular season home football game for the New York Giants and the New York Jets, both teams call Met Life Stadium home.

But there was one difference for the Super Bowl, the Department of Homeland Security labeled the championship game a " a level one national security event." This meant that instead of the regular stadium security being in charge, DHS got to throw its weight around.

For some bizarre reason, the DHS, obviously clueless of traffic patterns and public transportation capabilities during game days, told those attending the game that it would be best that they take public transportation rather their own cars to the game. This resulted in not only huge delays getting into the stadium, which could have been expected, given the security theater that all fans were forced to deal with, but also after the game, when fans tried to exit. 

Lew Rockwell has the full story of the post-game madness: Super Bowl Chaos.

Here are some of the idiotic quotes from officials post-game:
A New Jersey Transit official said that 25,000 people had been moved only to Secaucus Junction by midnight, two hours after confetti started raining down on the field, and called the operation a ‘tremendous success.’ 
This is worse than if Peyton Manning called the Super Bowl a major success. Secaucus Junction is only a stones throw from the stadium. These people wanted to get to NYC and beyond. They still had a full train ride ahead of them, at midnight! The irony of getting stuck like herded animals in Secaucus was probably not lost on all since, in the old days, most New Yorkers thought of Secaucus as nothing but pig farms.

Here's another gem via LRC:
Scoreboard announcements inside the stadium begged people to stay inside the gates to ease congestion and the New Jersey State Police bizarrely advised fans via Twitter to ‘enjoy the stadium atmosphere until congestion dissipates.’
I repeat all this went on at a stadium where the same size crowds regularly come and go from games.

But this is what happens when the government over-rules the private sector.

In one sense DHS was correct, it was a level 1 disaster. A level 1 traffic disaster caused by the DHS .

2 comments:

  1. " the New Jersey State Police bizarrely advised fans via Twitter to ‘enjoy the stadium atmosphere until congestion dissipates.’"
    .
    and the 11 dollar beer.
    .
    lol
    .

    ReplyDelete