All week, local officials were warning fans to give themselves extra time getting to the game, because of the layers of security and the crowds.
Apparently, not enough people gave themselves enough time.
According to Andre Malok of the Newark Star-Ledger, by 2:45 p.m., security officials at the Secaucus Junction train station weren’t able to keep up with the crowds, and their efforts to screen bags became cursory.
Everyone is still being screened at the game site, so it’s not necessarily a security issue for the Super Bowl.
But the reports of long delays are complicating the arrival of thousands, as local officials encouraged as much mass transit to the game as possible because of limited parking. There were also reports of some fans collapsing and being attended to by paramedics because of the overheated, crowded conditions.
Fans naturally handled the delays with the grace you’d expect, with reports of passengers chanting “New Jersey sucks” as they got off trains from New York.
Of course, if they weren’t on the trains, they’d have probably been saying the same thing about lane closings on the bridges.