More than 80,000 soccer fans descended on MetLife Stadium on Saturday for the first of eight World Cup matches in New Jersey. But most of them couldn’t drive there.
Because of strict security rules that severely limit parking near the stadium, the World Cup Host Committee expects a majority of attendees to arrive at the Meadowlands, the sprawling sports complex in East Rutherford, N.J., using other methods: train ($98, seven times the usual price from Midtown Manhattan), shuttle ($20, possibly on a yellow school bus), or ride-share services like Uber (no price cap; considerably more expensive when demand is surging).
So frustrated are some fans with the limited options and high costs that the host committee felt compelled to issue a statement warning people not to attempt to walk to the stadium, which is surrounded by busy highways and swampy marshland.
But what is the fastest way to get there? The least unpleasant? What awaits the hundreds of thousands of fans who have yet to make the journey?
To find out, four New York Times journalists gathered on Saturday in Midtown Manhattan and took four different modes of transportation — train, bus, ride-share and personal bicycle — to complete an unscientific race to the pitch, in sweltering heat. Here’s what it was like.
Train
The blocks around Penn Station on Saturday afternoon were a labyrinth of metal barricades, with fans corralled into long lines in order to secure an NJ Transit wristband, perhaps the most coveted match-day souvenir, because it ensured a ride back home.
At 2:50 p.m. I boarded a double-decker train bound for a transfer point at Secaucus Junction. (Even $98 doesn’t buy you a direct ride to the game.)
The 17-mile round trip from Penn Station typically costs just $12.90, and soccer fans weren’t happy about the markup. Just over half of the 40,000 available Saturday tickets were sold, according to NJ Transit. (NJ Transit has argued that the ticket price, initially set at $150 and then lowered, was necessary to cover the cost of security and other considerations.)
Still, the vibes on the train were immaculate. As the doors closed and air-conditioning filled the car, strangers hugged and cheered and rivals led dueling chants.
Yasin Benhaddou, a rapper from the San Francisco Bay Area, was one of the loudest. He gave Morocco fans a mini-concert in the mezzanine of the train, spitting verses from his song “Cali 2 Morocco.”
“Yallah khoya!” — “Let’s go, brother” — he rapped to a backing track, above the din of chants.
After an orderly transfer in Secaucus, I boarded a second train with several empty seats. It rolled past traffic and bucolic green landscapes.
After the train arrived at the Meadowlands, I had to walk for at least 15 minutes before finding my entrance to the stadium, over unshaded blacktop that reached 109 degrees.
My advice: Don’t forget to hydrate.
Total time: 1 hour 23 minutes
— Stefanos Chen
Bus
I arrived on Manhattan’s East Side at 2:32 p.m., to find a line of World Cup travelers encircling a city block. The line moved quickly, and once our yellow school bus was loaded we discovered that the police had blocked off other traffic, turning 42nd Street into a bus-only freeway. We rolled quickly through Times Square and into the Lincoln Tunnel.
Then the bus, and time itself, seemed to stop. Despite promises from transportation officials that ensured dedicated bus lanes on the New Jersey side of the route, our path was dammed by traffic.
Our driver decided to wing it.
She swung north onto the New Jersey Turnpike. Then she pulled a U-turn and drove south. She merged onto a spaghetti bowl of service roads. Nothing worked. We were stuck. Passengers began checking the time on their phones. Several times, the driver turned onto roads that took us farther from the stadium.
“No!” several passengers yelled. “The stadium’s that way!”
At a seemingly random spot on a road at the outer edge of the Meadowlands, the bus stopped and the driver opened the door. We exited quickly. The stadium was in sight, half a mile away. By the time I found the correct stadium gate, it was 15 minutes before kickoff.
Total time: 3 hours 28 minutes (potentially less with a different driver)
— Christopher Maag
Bicycle
From our starting point at The New York Times Building, Google Maps suggested two routes to New Jersey. One crossed the Hudson River at the George Washington Bridge, nine miles north by bike path; the other started with a ferry ride setting off four blocks from the office. The ferry seemed almost like cheating, so we chose the bridge route, which was five miles and 30 minutes longer.
I had persuaded my 20-something son to accompany me on his fixed-gear bike. Roughly four hours before the 6 p.m. kickoff of the Morocco-Brazil match, we pulled into traffic. It was chaotic even in Midtown, but traffic officers and blocked car lanes are gifts to the urban cyclist, and we were quickly on the Hudson River Greenway, heading north to the bridge.
My many tracking apps tell me it was 86 degrees at the time, with 42 percent humidity. But miles of uninterrupted bike path along a river can hide how hard you’re working. We were full of confidence.
The ascent to the George Washington Bridge (mile 9) is abrupt and steep. On the other side, the bike lanes ended. The streets of Fort Lee, N.J., are not inhospitable to cyclists, but the hills of Fort Lee are no joke.
Our first slightly hairy moment: The Google directions landed us at the intersection of Routes 124 and 46. Many lanes of irritated drivers were waiting for their turn to proceed, in several different directions. Our route required joining a six-lane stretch for about 500 feet, then making a left turn into what looked like parkland. We made it, but I wouldn’t recommend this maneuver.
After the brief respite of Overpeck County Park, we were on half-empty industrial-zone streets. I saw an early “FIFA Event Parking Here” sign. The lot was empty; we were still miles from the stadium.
Around mile 19 we endured one last bit of chaos. The directions put us on the kind of Meadowlands highway that can be reached only by making an errant merge on the way to someplace else.
Soon we were slowly threading between two lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic on an off-ramp where no bike should ever be. I exchanged a look with a driver as I sneaked past. Yes, this is stupid, my expression said, but I’ll be at Redd’s before you even make it off this ramp.
We were determined to beat the Google estimate of 1 hour 54 minutes. We did, but not by much, which was disheartening. And even at the hospitable Redd’s, a sports bar, we were still a shuttle ride away from the stadium. (The restaurant offered match-day parking for $225, which included a single free spot on the shuttle to the stadium; extra seats were $25 each.)
Encouraged by the mood of the partyers, nearly all of them in Brazil jerseys, my son and I shared a beer. (My fitness tracker claimed I had burned 1,203 active calories, which I believe.)
Total time: 1 hour 53 minutes
— Wm. Ferguson
Ride Share
Driving out of Manhattan is a crapshoot, especially if the route goes through the Lincoln Tunnel. But at 2:31 p.m. on Saturday, when my Uber driver picked me up at West 43rd Street and Eighth Avenue, it was clear that getting out of Midtown would be a breeze.
The app predicted the trip would cost $104.94. The expected arrival time was 3:15. Pricey, but fast. (Uber is also offering shuttle buses to ferry people back home, at $29 a seat.)
The driver zoomed through the Lincoln Tunnel, then around the back streets of Secaucus. On Route 3 West, about four miles from the stadium, traffic began to accumulate, but it moved along at a steady pace of around 10 miles an hour.
No one in the traffic jam seemed to mind. Brazil fans had festooned their windows with green and yellow flags. Morocco fans in a large van swung its sliding door open and waved their own flags, singing and playing loud music.
My driver deftly pulled to the far left lane as the exit for the stadium approached.
“Too much traffic,” he said. He zipped by the long line of cars and exited at the ramp for the stadium service road, where sweaty workers in red vests barked confusing directions.
Unsure of where to leave me, my driver began driving toward a ramp that went back to the highway, but I hastily stopped him. He dropped me off less than a mile from the stadium, in a vast parking lot full of fans who had either driven themselves or arrived by Uber, shuttle or school bus.
My trip cost $110.98, not including tip, and I had arrived precisely at 3:15. I texted my colleagues. None of them had arrived yet. I had won.
Total time: 1 hour
— Maria Cramer
Takeaways
From our starting point in Manhattan, a shared ride was by far the fastest route, followed by train, bicycle and bus. These results were surprising, but the explanation was not: A higher price (not counting the human toll on the cyclist) meant less travel time.
But there’s no guarantee that this pattern will hold. Lackluster train ticket sales could push more fans onto the highway, gumming up bus routes and adding far more private vehicles to the road than the host committee expected.
The agency said on Monday that, while it has the capacity to take 40,000 train passengers, it has updated its target to about half that many per game, because more riders are expected to take shuttle buses or park at the nearby American Dream Mall (4,700 available parking spaces, $225 each). Even so, only about 14,000 train tickets for Tuesday’s game had been sold by early Monday afternoon, according to two people familiar with the planning.
Unexpected rail problems could also upend travel plans. In recent weeks, a spate of track fires and electrical issues led to major delays at Penn Station. NJ Transit said it had two large ferries and additional buses on standby in case train service was compromised.
For Tuesday’s match between France and Senegal, the first to coincide with rush hour traffic in New York, all 12,000 seats on the shuttle bus service have already been sold, the host committee said. (Additional yellow school buses won’t be available, since class is in session.)
Uber may have won the day on Saturday, but the service is limited; the company estimated that it had carried only about 6,000 people to the stadium.
And no matter which route they take, soccer fans traveling to the Meadowlands will have to keep something in mind: Once the game is over, they must still find their way back home.
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