NJ-ARP Blog

I went to the Prudential Center last night and saw the first place New Jersey Devils beat the Buffalo Sabres 2-1 in a shootout before a sell-out crowd. Take the jump and I’ll tell you all about the train trips and my opinions on the Prudential Center.

The Train Trips

Although the fastest and cheapest way to the Prudential Center is to drive, I decided to be a good transit advocate and take the train from Raritan. The total fare was $32.25 for the three of us, and the door-to-door trip time was about 1 hour 45 minutes in each direction, an hour longer (in each direction) than driving. The trips when smoothly, although, as always, there’s room for improvement in NJ Transit’s operations.

The first obstacle involved parking at Raritan. The NJT web site said that a parking permit is required before 8 PM. A reconnaissance trip to the station didn’t reveal any additional details, but I did notice that on-street parking restrictions expired at 4 PM. So I called the Raritan Borough Clerk, and she said it’s fine to park at the station after 4 PM without a permit.

With the parking situation resolved, we headed off to the station to get the 5:09 PM train to Newark Penn Station. We got to Raritan and there were a few dozen people waiting for the train, with the vast majority of people heading to the Devils game. This scene was repeated at station after station, with dozens of people boarding at each stop. I was surprised to see that one of the most heavily-used stops was Bridgewater. I guess lots of free parking makes it easy for people to take the train. On the other end of the scale, only 10 people boarded at Garwood, which is probably 10 more than board on a non-game day.

With a crowded train and no ticket vending machines and no open ticket offices, it took the crew a long time to issue tickets. They didn’t get to us until we got to Westfield. We could have saved money by lying about our origin station, but we bought the proper tickets for our trip. Using something better than a 19th century fare collection method would have made things easier for the crews and reduced the amount of lost revenue. Some passengers detrained at Plainfield, so it’s likely they got to ride for free.

When the train pulled-in on Newark Penn Station track A, most people headed for the stairs to the waiting room. A few of us took the stairs to Market Street. That worked well, and it appeared that the Market Street area had been renovated recently. The walk to the Prudential Center was easy, although it took a while to cross Route 21. (I’ll talk more about the Prudential Center later.)

After the game, we walked through the rain back to Newark Penn Station. A train departure monitor on Market Street told us the 10:11 PM train to Raritan was on track 5. We walked up the stairs and found the train open and ready for boarding even though it was over 15 minutes before departure. (Such early boarding is apparently impossible at New York Penn Station.)

The return train was much more crowded than the train to Newark. It was standing room only, and no fares were collected. NJ Transit needs to run this train in two sections, with the first train going express to Plainfield. This would make for a faster, more comfortable trip for the passengers, and increase revenue since fares could be collected. Perhaps this will be possible after track 5 is extended to hold two trains.

The Prudential Center

I’ll just say it: I think the Meadowlands is better for watching hockey. Sure the Prudential Center is nicely decorated, and the dual concourses make for better pedestrian flow. But when it comes to sitting in your seat and watching the game, I think the Prudential Center is inferior.

We had $100 (ack!) seats on the mezzanine level, in row 8. These seats were significantly further from the ice than row 8 at the Meadowlands. That’s because the Prudential Center has 76 - count em - 76 luxury boxes, which are mostly empty, taking up space that could have been used for seats for regular fans (assuming regular fans can afford $100 per ticket, I certainly can’t). See the photo for all the empty luxury box seats which could have been used for seats for real fans.

The other problem with the seats is that they’re too narrow. I’m a skinny guy, and I had trouble fitting in the seats without having to twist sideways to stand up or sit down.

The Prudential Center seemed quieter than the Meadowlands. Maybe it was all the sound absorbing material in the rafters. I also noticed that all the spontaneous cheers originated in the $10 and $20 nosebleed seats, while the people in the $200 lower-level seats stayed nice and quiet. Maybe they were still suffering from sticker-shock.

As I mentioned earlier, the dual concourses helped a lot with pedestrian flow between periods. But they also significantly increased the time required to exit after the game, with people having to traverse multiple escalators and stairs on their ways to the exits. At the Meadowlands, the concourse exits directly to outside, without backups of people waiting to go down stairs.

So the Prudential Center looks nice, but do the Devils logos on the urinal flush valves really improve my experience of watching a hockey game? No. I’d rather have reasonably-priced seats that are wider and closer to the ice. And that’s what was available at the Meadowlands.

Posted by Bob Scheurle under Prudential Center & Trip reports.