It's getting real in a New Jersey parking lot
EAST RUTHERFORD, New Jersey — Before the World Cup began, New York and New Jersey unveiled competing transportation plans.
After several matches, $20 shuttle buses subsidized by New York keep selling out, but $98 New Jersey Transit train trips don’t.
Now New Jersey Transit is poised to lose millions during the tournament, blaming the revenue shortfall on lower-than-expected demand caused in part by the cheaper options. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has suggested maybe that is because of the sticker shock fans face to get on New Jersey trains and buses — an observation sure to rub salt in Jersey’s wounds.
The tensions are just the latest manifestation of a dysfunctional relationship between the two jurisdictions that comprise what FIFA calls “New York New Jersey,” where England and Panama will face off today in their final group-stage match.
After the tournament’s first game at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium — between Brazil and Morocco on June 13 — lines swelled in the parking lot for New York-run buses back to Manhattan. Worried about a crowd stuck at MetLife, the New Jersey State Police asked New Jersey’s state-run transit agency to carry some of the waiting fans instead.
New Jersey Transit had room for 40,000 people but only about 22,000 customers that night. It had spent months on a plan that was moving people quickly and did not want to suddenly upend it with an unexpected surge in passengers on its trains and buses. The agency fears a repeat of the 2014 Super Bowl, in which overcrowding left fans in the same stadium’s parking lot for hours and stained the agency’s reputation for years.
Kris Kolluri, the head of New Jersey Transit, said the bistate host committee, the New Jersey governor’s office and the State Police all decided that the transit agency would move thousands of people after 90 minutes, if needed. By then, however, the lines had calmed on their own.
