When the World Cup comes to New Jersey this summer, the state’s transit agency expects to carry 40,000 soccer enthusiasts to and from each of the eight matches being held in the Meadowlands, including the tournament’s finale.
That influx of fans is going to leave NJ Transit’s regular commuters barred from Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan — the nation’s busiest transportation hub — for four hours before the start of each of the matches at MetLife Stadium, according to two people with direct knowledge of the plan who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it.
During those four-hour periods, one of which will coincide with the weekday evening rush hour, only fans with tickets to that day’s match will be allowed to enter NJ Transit’s sections of Penn Station, the two people said. To clear security checkpoints at the station, the fans will have to hold train tickets specially produced for the World Cup that will assign riders a particular hour to arrive at Penn Station, one of them said.
Whether those tickets will cost more than the normal fare for riding to MetLife remains to be determined, this person said. In Boston, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority is charging $80 for a round-trip ticket from South Station to Foxboro for World Cup matches, four times the usual price for riding to a New England Patriots game.
The first of the World Cup matches at MetLife is on June 13, with five more matches in June and two in July, including the final on July 19, a Sunday.
Organizers and transit experts say that the special travel arrangements for the World Cup reflect the heightened security around the event and the decision to not allow parking at the stadium on match days, unlike when the New York Giants and Jets play at MetLife.
NJ Transit is finalizing its transportation plan for the World Cup and expects to announce it this month, the two people said. That plan will include alternatives for the commuters who will be shut out of Penn Station and will probably involve redirecting them to PATH trains or ferries to New Jersey, the people said.
Some elected officials in New Jersey called on the transit agency to reveal its plan now so that commuters could start making alternative plans.
“For the 99 percent that can’t afford to attend the games, it would be nice to at least know how you’re going to get home from work,” said Ravi S. Bhalla, a Democratic assemblyman from Hoboken.
Details of the plan were first reported on Monday by The Bergen Record.
NJ Transit said in a statement that it remained “committed to safely transporting 40,000 fans to and from the FIFA matches, while also providing a transportation plan that will minimize the impacts to our regular riders to the greatest extent possible.” FIFA is the international governing body for soccer.
Tim Minton, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said that the agency was “rock-solid, 100 percent certain” that subway riders and commuters who use the Long Island Rail Road would have access to Penn Station throughout the five-week tournament. Penn Station is also used by Amtrak and the M.T.A.’s subways.
Amtrak service is expected largely to be unaffected by the World Cup, though on match days, its customers may be directed to board their trains at Moynihan Train Hall, across Eighth Avenue from Penn Station, the people with direct knowledge of the plan said.
Amtrak, which owns Penn Station and the tracks that connect it to New Jersey, referred questions to the World Cup’s New York New Jersey Host Committee, which said: “We are working closely with FIFA and our regional transportation partners to finalize a comprehensive mobility plan for the tournament. We will not speak to specific details until the full plan is released, which we look forward to announcing in the coming weeks.”
It is highly unusual for a public transit agency to give priority to special-event attendees over its regular customers. But transportation experts said that NJ Transit had little choice once MetLife was chosen by FIFA to host matches.
The agency’s rail network is not capable of carrying its usual load of commuters and moving 40,000 people to and from the stadium, with the additional security protocols that the World Cup requires, the people with knowledge of the plan said. After fans without tickets stormed through gates at a Copa América match near Miami in 2024, extra precautions are being taken at big soccer matches.
There will be no parking for fans at MetLife during the World Cup matches, eliminating an option that tens of thousands of football fans use to get to Jets and Giants games there. For the World Cup, the security perimeter for MetLife will extend to Penn Station and to Secaucus Junction in New Jersey, where fans will transfer to other trains and buses to get to the stadium, the people with direct knowledge of the plan said.
They emphasized that four of the eight matches will be played on weekends, and only one of the weekday matches will overlap with the evening rush. That match, pitting Norway against Senegal, is scheduled at 8 p.m. on June 22, a Monday, leaving commuters barred from Penn Station from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m., they said.
Normally, NJ Transit’s ridership is lighter on Mondays than during the middle of the week, and the agency intends to advise commuters to work from home that day if possible, the people with direct knowledge of the plan said.
On Tuesday morning at Penn Station, bright blue digital billboards displayed soccer balls emblazoned with Amtrak logos and encouraged commuters to “book early for the big match.” But the World Cup is a source of anxiety for some of the 64,000 NJ Transit riders who use the station on a daily basis.
Stacey Easy, 51, who works at Madison Square Garden, was shocked to hear about the proposed closure. She commutes almost 90 minutes from her home in Hamilton, N.J.
“It makes no sense,” she said. “People still have lives, and we need to work, and we need to get home. The train is the only way.”
People who live and work between New Jersey and New York should be prioritized over soccer fans, said David Roberts, 59, a lawyer who lives in Monmouth County.
“They shouldn’t have the World Cup here,” he said. “We don’t have the infrastructure for it.”
The World Cup will be only the latest sporting event at MetLife to snarl commutes, Shawn McLoughlin, 58, pointed out. Mr. McLoughlin works in sales in a Midtown office and commutes from Park Ridge, N.J. He has held season tickets to Giants games for 25 years and said he was all too familiar with the traffic around the Meadowlands, the marshy area where the stadium is located.
“This is a global event that the Meadowlands and NJ Transit cannot handle,” Mr. McLoughlin said. He said that Gov. Mikie Sherrill “should get involved on the state level because it’s a poor reflection of New Jersey.” A spokesman for the governor referred questions about the World Cup transit plan to NJ Transit.
Other commuters, familiar with the challenges involved in riding NJ Transit, remained unfazed.
“It is what it is,” Vinny Agarwal, 46, said. “People need to adjust to it.”
In some ways, NJ Transit has been here before: In the run-up to the Super Bowl in 2014, fans were urged to take mass transit to the stadium. So many people followed the advice that thousands waited hours to board a train, and attendees were asked to remain inside the stadium long after the game had ended to avoid overwhelming the rail system.
Since then, the railroad has learned quite a few lessons, said Kevin Corbett, who ran NJ Transit from 2018 to January 2025. When MetLife Stadium hosted a three-shows by Taylor Swift in 2023 and five performances by Beyoncé (including three on weeknights) in 2025, things went relatively smoothly, Mr. Corbett said.
He said that some FIFA officials told him that “the way we handled Taylor Swift and Beyoncé helped give them confidence that they could hold the finals at MetLife.”
Patrick McGeehan is a Times reporter who covers the economy of New York City and its airports and other transportation hubs.
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