One way to promote transit for football games, set up tailgating operations...

See "Metro-North, others offer football fans alternative to driving" from the New Haven Register. From the article:

Got tickets to the Jets-Patriots game Sunday at the Meadowlands? Dreading the hours-long drive home, fighting traffic in the parking lot and then on the highway? Relax! Hop on the train and pop open a beer.

Starting Sunday, Metro-North will run trains from Union Station in New Haven practically all the way to Giants Stadium for 10 Giants and Jets games that start at 1 p.m. You’ll only need one ticket, and the only place you’ll have to change trains will be in Secaucus, N.J., where a shuttle train will take you the last 10 minutes to the new station at the stadium.

“Overnight (Saturday), New Jersey Transit is going to send their three train sets up to New Haven,” said Marjorie Anders, spokeswoman for Metro-North. The trains, loaded with fans, then will head via Amtrak tracks into Queens and across the Hell Gate Bridge into Manhattan. They will stop at Penn Station, then head on New Jersey Transit lines to Secaucus Junction, Anders said.

All of this may seem complex to get to an NFL game — it does take more than 2 1/2 hours to get there — but once you board the train in New Haven (it also will stop in Bridgeport and Fairfield), you won’t have to think about it.

“This is tremendous evidence of cooperation between four big agencies,” Anders said. But this is football, after all (it’s also taking a lot of cars off the already-jammed highways).

To kick off the service, former Jets wide receiver Wayne Chrebet will sign autographs at the Larchmont, N.Y., station at 9:30 a.m., then ride the train that leaves New Haven at 9:05 to the Meadowlands.

The pilot project required cooperation from Metro-North, Amtrak, the Connecticut Department of Transportation and NJ Transit, and the train will have to navigate lines of four electric companies. That’s why NJ Transit trains are being used. ...

Joe Barletta of Branford has season tickets to the Giants and said he has the drive down to a science, but it still takes up to 2 1/2 hours to get home, sometimes more. “There’s always a jam after the game,” he said. “It’s never not a jam.”

He said he’d consider riding the train, except for one thing: “We like to tailgate.”

Tailgating at a football game. (Photo source unknown.)

Create the opportunity for hospitality tents and tailgating, and public transportation to football games could get more cars off the roads...