In less than two weeks, Brazil and Morocco will meet at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., and close to 80,000 fans who have paid thousands of dollars for World Cup tickets and accommodations will have one last calculation to make: Bus, train, taxi or road rage?
The options are limited, and the available spots are dwindling. And quite likely expensive.
“This isn’t just another Sunday Jets game,” Justin Brannan, the senior director of major event operations for Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York, said about the preparations.
“You can’t just roll up in your Toyota and drop off your friends five feet from the door,” he said.
Unlike most major events hosted at MetLife Stadium, there will be virtually no parking available on the premises, because of heightened security at the venue.
Traffic between Midtown Manhattan and the Meadowlands is expected to be heavy, and New Jersey officials have advised residents to work from home on game days if possible. The New York-New Jersey region will host eight matches, beginning with the Brazil-Morocco match on Saturday, June 13, and ending with the final on July 19.
But there are a limited number of tickets available for each of the public transit options to attend the games, which means last-minute planners could get stuck with one of the costlier or more arduous routes to MetLife. (Don’t even think about walking there, the host committee has warned.)
Here is a breakdown of what ticket holders — and commuters caught in the middle of World Cup mania — can expect.
Game Day Math
The New York-New Jersey host committee expects more than half of the attendees, around 40,000 per match, to buy a $98 NJ Transit train ticket for a ride that usually costs less than $13.
Some 12,000 to 18,000 fans per match are expected to take a $20 ride on a shuttle bus — some of which will be repurposed yellow school buses — from Midtown Manhattan.
About 6,000 people per match could take a ride share service like Uber or Lyft, but demand is expected to be high, leading to much higher than usual fares.
Roughly 20,000 V.I.P.s, including celebrities and sponsors, will have their travel managed by FIFA, but those arrangements won’t help most fans.
As for those who opt to drive themselves, there are roughly 4,500 parking spots at the American Dream Mall, about a mile walk from the stadium, where a single spot for the day will cost $225. (So far, around 9,500 parking spaces, more than a quarter of the available spots during the entire tournament, have already been reserved.)
The host committee said these options should be able to accommodate 78,000 fans per match, most of whom are traveling from New York City, but some offerings are selling faster than others.
As of Wednesday, about 34,000 of the $20 bus tickets, or about 27 percent of the total inventory, had sold, according to two people familiar with the sales. But fewer than 19,000 train tickets — around 6 percent of capacity — have sold so far. Bus tickets were available for sale before train tickets.
Train
NJ Transit, the New Jersey agency in charge of ferrying about half of the fans between state lines, is charging $98 for a 17-mile round-trip train ride from Manhattan to MetLife Stadium.
The tickets from Pennsylvania Station in New York to the Meadowlands in New Jersey, which typically cost less than $13 round trip, were initially set at $150 for World Cup matches, but a round of vocal criticism led the transit agency to lower the price twice.
Gov. Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey defended the price, saying that FIFA left NJ Transit with a $48 million bill for extra security and other tournament-related costs.
Bus
Shuttle buses to the stadium will leave from three places in Manhattan — Port Authority Bus Terminal, a spot near Grand Central Terminal, one west of Central Park — and one stop in Clifton, N.J.
The service was initially set to cost $80 per seat, but Ms. Hochul announced a price cut to $20, after renting a large fleet of yellow school buses to augment the service. As part of the arrangement, the governor’s office said 20 percent of bus seats, per day, would be reserved for New York State residents.
Ride Share
Ride-share services, including Uber and Lyft, will be available, but the host committee has warned that the rides could be expensive, because of limited cars and high demand.
Alex Lasry, the chief executive of the local host committee, said in April that ride shares should be considered a limited, supplemental option, and there would be no fare caps implemented.
Uber is expected on Thursday to announce that it will add a $10 fee to all trips headed to MetLife Stadium, and a $60 charge on all trips leaving the stadium. The designated drop-off site for taxis is more than a mile away from the stadium.
Josh Gold, a spokesman for Uber, said the surcharge would be paid entirely to drivers, to encourage more drivers to be available.
To mitigate a rush of traffic after the games, Uber will offer a $49 shuttle service from the stadium to New York City and Hoboken. It will have about 50 buses, with space for roughly 2,700 passengers.
Stefanos Chen is a Times reporter covering New York City’s transit system.
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