After the Transportation Committee had a hearing today to discuss how NJ Transit handled the Super Bowl, Transportation Committee Chair John Wisniewski told NJTV News Managing Editor Mike Schneider that he was disappointed that the planning for the Super Bowl fell short. He said there were critical lapses in the planning even though there was more than a year to plan for it.
Wisniewski said that the Super Bowl was an event that the state had talked and boasted about for more than a year and it seems that there were critical lapses in the planning that led to a lot of patrons being disappointed on their way out of the stadium.
NJ Transit Executive Director Ronnie Hakim did not attend the committee hearing. Wisniewski said that he had a conversation with Hakim, and he understands that she is recently on the job. But he said there are people who work in NJ Transit who were involved in the planning negotiations and interactions with the NFL and host committee and those people could have been available so the committee had a better understanding of what did or didn’t happen.
“Clearly there were people there [NJ Transit] who were involved in organizing this. They should have been made available. I’ll allow Hakim when she does come before the committee to explain that, but this is an opportunity for New Jersey to really show its stuff and it didn’t happen that way,” said Wisniewski.
As for the Port Authority toll hike, Wisniewski said that no one should be shocked that the state was involved in putting forward an increase.
“Any time a toll hike is proposed, people propose it to be higher, people come in and say they are shocked at the height and then there is a lower toll increase. What was concerning for me was that the same names that we had heard had been involved in the lane diversion were also involved in this and so it really raises the specter that there was potentially some type of organized effort of this type of behavior. The same names popping up raises concern that this is an agency that is desperately in need of reform,” said Wisniewski.
Wisniewski said he thinks that the committee investigating the George Washington Bridge lane closures really has to focus on bipartisanship. There are no Democrat or Republican facts, he said.
When asked about Bridget Kelly attending hearings, Wisniewski said that he doesn’t know that much could be read into the fact that any one person comes to a hearing.
“I think there is a legal process that gets played out if they have a disagreement in the ruling of the judge. I don’t want to predict what they will do because I don’t know what they will do and we will have to see what the judge rules after counsel has made their arguments in front of the judge,” Wisniewski said.