It took me an hour from metuchen to scarlet lot. 45 minutes on river road from 287 to stadium.
Game Day Operations - SUGGESTIONS FOR RU PLANNERS to stop turning off tens of thousands of fans
- Thread starter ScarletKid2008
- Start date
Why in the world did you take 287 all the way to River Road to get to the stadium coming from Metuchen?
Rutgers has a very good engineering program. Seems like the School owes all the fans an answer to the issues raised in this thread. First, that they hear them, second , what steps are they are taking to quickly study short term and long term solutions. And then keep fans posted on an ongoing basis. Seems like they can make the bag situation better immediately with better communications on policy (including maybe a more realistic policy) and adding resources to handle the bag check in a more reasonable manner. For the longer term, I would ask the Engineering Department to conduct a study and come up with possible solutions. It would be a great project for the Engineering group and Engineering students.. They could also include J-M Arena in the study. Most of us believe both the Football and Basketball programs are moving up in success and will draw bigger and bigger crowds so improving the fan experience with travel, parking and entering is a critical part of the programs' success.
Cause i was running late and i thought i might avoid the delays from the students crossing in front of the stadium. I get it, it was a BAD idea.
The football gameday bottlenecks are a leadership problem, not an engineering problem.
An exclusive bus lane from College Avenue Campus to Rutgers Stadium can be set up for little cost on existing infrastructure.
Suggestions for a new train line connecting Piscataway and New Brunswick are absurd. Who would build and operate that? NJ Transit. That means 10-figure construction cost followed by millions in annual operating losses.
The bag policy invokes safety and homeland security. My view is if Rutgers threw its bag policy into the garbage and published and enforced a replacement policy allowing fans to bring into the football stadium whatever bags they need, safety and homeland security would not be compromised. By liberalizing the bag policy, attendance would be more likely to rise than fall.
On removing bag policy bottlenecks, common sense leadership would be more effective than engineering studies.
The Howard band in the stands kept trying to find a time to play - they finally gave up and just played during the piped in music
Holy crap, is this for real? It took 20 minutes from Metuchen to the yellow lot via 287 to S. Washington Ave to Metlars to 18 to the yellow lot; it's normally a 15-minute drive with moderate traffic and was 20 minutes due to the 5-minute holdup getting into the yellow lot. At 3:15 pm 287 was ok - if it wasn't I would take back roads like Ethel or 27/Plainfield to Suttons to Metlars and it would be about the same time. Do you have to use River Road to get to Scarlet? Does it also take time to get out of Scarlet? Took me 2 minutes to be out of yellow and 15 minutes to get home.
As I said earlier in the thread, it should be easy to make College Ave to George St to the intersection with Landing Lane devoted to buses and drop people off at the foot of the bridge, which is only a 1/2 mile walk to the stadium student entrance (vs. a 2 mile walk from the College Ave student center). The buses can then turn around in the parking lot (a cop there would be helpful for directing traffic and ensuring the bus passengers can safely cross over Landing Lane to the walking bridge) and head back to College Ave. Dedicating the bus lane all the way across Landing Lane Bridge would likely be asking too much, but I bet a ton of people would be ok with a 10-minute walk vs. a 40-minute walk.
Landing lane should be for bus and pedestrian traffic only for football games.
George street section leading to the landing lane bridge too.
Now if they get rid of the stupid 80s Jock Rock music. Hell, the stadium experience on the PS5 game is better lol.
Scarlet enters off of River.
We left at 6, because my daughter had skinned her knee at the Metuchen Municipal Pool and that was an hour plus delay. 5-7 minutes delay leaving after the fireworks.
Gotcha - sucks that one can only get to Scarlet from River Rd. At the very least if River Rd from 287 to SHI is the problem, perhaps you could cut some of the time off by taking the back way from 287 via S. Washington to Metlars to Morris to Hoes Ln W to greatly reduce the time spent on River Rd.
I don’t know all of the players numbers so I wanted to hear the names of the players who caught the passes of made plays on defense but it wasn’t loud enough.
the point of having the Howard band there it to hear them play. They tried a few times.
Probably could have. Or take
Kilmer to RR and go up. I don't know what traffic delay on hoes is like. Thanks.
I'm used to commuting there from my hometown of NB, not my adopted town of metuchen.
I think you underestimate teh blue and yellow lot people who just walk straight ahead.. as well as teh students who don't enter the stadium but walk past teh south gate to teh tailgates then enter elsewhere. I do think north gate has the most. But I would suggest if you went by number of guests per number of turnstyles.. East would have teh most... that is.. it is so narrow compared to others. Same for leaving teh game at the end... they should prevent the lower bowl from exiting teh east game and save that exit for upper deck people... that backs up horribly. Build more entry/exit points between east and north.. there is room.
You're probably right on fans per turnstyle being highest for the east gate - was fine for Howard (5-10 min to get in and the aux bag line was short too), but for many more full games it has been bad (20-25+ minutes to get in).
At the end of the game that has a big crowd and when the game is close so most leave at the end, there is a "secret" path for upper level folks on the east (RU) side. Go down the stairs, not the ramps and then once downstairs walk across to the top row of the stadium near midfield and walk along that top row, rather than the concourse, until you get to the Aux gate, past the ramp exit. Has saved our group 10-15 minutes (yes, we've done the "control" experiment by having some in our crew take the ramps while some take the shortcut in parallel) many times and now I don't have to even try to convince them to go that way anymore lol.
Two things are are a must and easy fixes that can happen right away.
Fix the bag issue. Clear bags and can go through any line.
And get rid of the piped in music.
Fix the bag issue. Clear bags and can go through any line.
And get rid of the piped in music.
Yes on bags, which everyone can agree on and an emphatic no on the music, as that's a subjective opinion.
Why does Rutgers enforce a stricter bag policy then the New York Yankees?
Rutgers: Clear bags only, 12x12x4 inches, limited entrances
New York Yankees: Any soft sided bag, 16x16x8 inches, all entrances
At the Belmont Stakes, an event attracting more than 100,000 spectators, people bring coolers into the venue.
What is next at Rutgers football games, a mask policy and vaccine mandate?
Rutgers: Clear bags only, 12x12x4 inches, limited entrances
New York Yankees: Any soft sided bag, 16x16x8 inches, all entrances
At the Belmont Stakes, an event attracting more than 100,000 spectators, people bring coolers into the venue.
What is next at Rutgers football games, a mask policy and vaccine mandate?
I don't know if the bus route could go under the RT 18 bridge in the park, but if it could, the trip time would be reduced by 20 minutes.
In the capital plan, a boardwalk connected the George St transit hub (the recreated ledge) and Johnson Park. There is a map on page 10 of the PDF
Rutgers Master Plan
In the capital plan, a boardwalk connected the George St transit hub (the recreated ledge) and Johnson Park. There is a map on page 10 of the PDF
Rutgers Master Plan
Is this sarcasm? What would that cost? 10. 12, 15 million $$$$$
oh yeah.. thanks for letting that one out. Since I am in Florida now it won't affect me... but clearly you have experienced the issue of which I spoke. Way back when you could have exited into teh lot behind Hale from those stairs.. but they stopped that. That was a mistake.
I am convinced that master plan was just BS to pay some firm to produce. In a few years, they will pay another firm to do one.
In the area near Brower some of this plan is under way. Records hall and Brower are gone or going. When we have a new President we may hear about the next plan.
That was long overdue no matter how you look at it. Records Hall was WWII "temporary" structure for the military, iirc.
Not sure.
But they might be the ones who tell those that want to help pro bono, “nah, we know what we’re doing.”
The plan is underway? It was announced in 2013 as the 2030 plan and has been stalled. They started removing Records Hall in June 2022 and closed Brower in June 2023, but rumors are that Brower won't be demoed for another 2 years and a new dining hall won't be ready until 2029 at the earliest. Also, Ford Hall has sat untouched for years now too. What is going on.
Agree here. The lack of movement and urgency is unacceptable. They had a great and exciting plan to transform the premier location of our flagship campus. The momentum and funding should have been there to hit this thing hard. Having a campus visibly under construction for that long is a huge detriment to perspective students
There currently is fencing around Brower, at least on the College Ave side. It cuts down the middle of Brower and Stonier. I'd assume something is going on. However, I would have assumed RU would build a new dining hall before tearing down the old one.
