NEW YORK—Super Bowl Boulevard officially opened on a snowy Wednesday with free events up and down the 13-block stretch on Broadway from 34th to 47th Streets.
The area will be open from noon to 10 p.m. until Feb. 1 before the big game. Attractions include a 60-foot high toboggan run, the Vince Lombardi trophy, a “video park,” autograph sessions, and daily concerts at 8 p.m.
Over the course of the week, event planners expect over 1 million people to walk through the blocked off area around Times Square.
This, Metropolitan Transportation Authority chair Thomas Prendergast says, makes the MTA’s job easier in accommodating the “mass transit Super Bowl.”
“The choice of the venue for the week activities on Broadway couldn’t be better located for us in terms of the infrastructure we have in place,” Prendergast said. “We don’t have to bring transportation; a lot of it’s there.”
Transporting a million people an hour is something the MTA does for events year in and year out, Prendergast said. For example, during Macy’s 4th of July Fireworks and Thanksgiving Parade, over a million people descend on the subways in an hour and the MTA deals with those events every year.
“I believe those numbers make the Super Bowl pale in comparison,” Prendergast said.
