New Yorkers should not shy away from taking public transit on FIFA World Cup final match days when the football championship comes across the river to East Rutherford, NJ, this summer, MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber said this week.
The MTA will run regular and enhanced subway and bus service during the competition’s eight local match days between mid-June and mid-July at MetLife Stadium, Lieber said during a press conference following the agency’s April 29 board meeting.
“The MTA in New York is ready to run regular and some enhanced service and to accommodate everybody, whether they’re going to work or they’re going to a doctor or going to school,” Lieber said. “Nobody needs to stay home because the World Cup is happening.”
Lieber said the agency is still determining what enhanced service it will provide during the weeks-long competition.
“We’re studying where the special events overlap with other special events, and how our service and the work and the construction work that’s going on in the summer [overlap],” Lieber said. “We’re active and we’re making a plan to provide good service on those days.”
MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber at 500 Pearl Street.Photo by Lloyd Mitchell
The World Cup is expected to bring 1.2 million visitors to the region, according to the event’s host committee. However, leaders in the hotel and tourism industries have said the competition has, thus far, not generated the boom in local bookings initially projected, reports indicate.
Nevertheless, the city announced earlier this week that it will host one free event in each borough on match days, where fans can watch the games. Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Gov. Kathy Hochul pitched the “fan zones” as a way for New Yorkers to watch the games without having to shell out exorbitant ticket and transportation costs to see them at MetLife Stadium.
Those events will be hosted at locations including Rockefeller Center in Manhattan, Brooklyn Bridge Park, the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens, the Bronx Terminal Market, and Staten Island University Hospital Community Park.
The MTA chair said the MTA plans to run the kind of service it provides during the U.S. Open, which takes place each year at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows Corona Park. Last year, the MTA ran five additional 7 trains and had four extra Long Island Rail Road trains make stops at the Mets-Willets Point station, by the tennis center, every day during the U.S. Open Fan Week.
“The projections about the numbers of people who are going to be here are not inconsistent with our tourists, the volumes of tourists that we deal with on a regular basis,” Lieber said. “We’re ready, and we’re excited, and we’re determined to provide good service. And we have the capacity.”