On Monday night, I was fortunate enough to attend to Georgia versus Alabama national championship football game at Atlanta’s Mercedes Benz Stadium. Unfortunately, I was confronted with several problems along the way during my game day experience.
The first thing I noticed was that there seemed to be no communication between law enforcement and the public in regard to where we were to enter the stadium when the main gate was shut down awaiting the Trump presidential motorcade. Several people could be heard asking a security guard where to go when they were clearing the area. His response was, “I don’t know, but go that way”— and he was pointing to gates 2 and 4. This led to a long line around the building where we waited around 2 hours– from 5:30 to 7:30 pm in the cold and steady rain. We never made it anywhere near the gate, but then a staffer came to tell everybody that gate 1 where the president came in was open, and had a 10-minute wait.
The only problem was that the ticket scanners were intermittently malfunctioning.
After the game, my group proceeded to the Vine City MARTA station where we paid $30 to ride the train. We were able to ride to Five Points, but no further. The trains ended up being delayed due to a “door faulting” issue due to extremely heavy ridership according to MARTA’s official Twitter account. This led to everybody leaving the station to try to catch a ride in Underground Atlanta at nearly 2 am.
Shortly thereafter, MARTA sent a tweet saying train service had ended for the night, and any remaining passengers would receive a “courtesy ride.”
Unfortunately, I saw firsthand how Atlanta may not be able to handle big crowds that come with hosting events such as the national championship game, or even the Super Bowl and Final Four in years to come.
If my Monday’s night’s bad experience is any indication of the future, the city of Atlanta, Mercedes Benz Stadium and MARTA must make some big improvements. Soon.
Rosser Southerland of Marietta was a 2017 InsiderAdvantage Georgia intern.
