{"id":265869,"date":"2026-06-13T21:59:20","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T21:59:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/265869\/"},"modified":"2026-06-13T21:59:20","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T21:59:20","slug":"gridlock-slams-nyc-as-world-cup-travelers-rocked-by-chaotic-transit-planning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/265869\/","title":{"rendered":"Gridlock slams NYC as World Cup travelers rocked by ‘chaotic’ transit planning"},"content":{"rendered":"

The beautiful game made an absolute mess of the Big Apple Saturday, as mass gridlock shuttered Midtown streets and left traffic snarled to make it easier for fans to get to MetLife Stadium<\/a> for the region\u2019s first World Cup match. <\/p>\n

Travelers were especially impacted around Penn Station and Madison Square Garden, where streets were closed to speed up shuttle buses for fans heading across the Hudson River to North Jersey<\/a> to watch Brazil play Morocco. About 1.2 million soccer fans were expected to hit the hosting NYC area for the world\u2019s biggest sporting event.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is chaotic,\u201d said soccer fan Tim Bouman, who was wearing a Brazil shirt and visiting from the Netherlands.<\/p>\n

\"MassMass gridlock rocked the Big Apple Saturday with traffic snarling to a screeching halt as major Midtown streets were shuttered to facilitate travel to MetLife Stadium for the region\u2019s first match in this year\u2019s World Cup. Bloomberg via Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cI just got my [World Cup] tickets online yesterday, and I\u2019m just asking the cop, like, right now, where we need to go? One cop told us to go this way, and the other one told us to go the other way, and now we need to walk around again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bouman said he believes NYC is more focused on the New York Knicks and their quest for an NBA title <\/a>than on dealing with the World Cup.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think if the [World Cup] was in Europe,<\/a> it would have been, like, way more organized, for sure,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

NY Transit trains at Penn Station were strictly reserved for World Cup ticketholders for much of Saturday, leaving everyone else seeking to use the service scrambling to find Uber, buses and other alternate means of transportation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a little bit annoying right now because I can\u2019t get my home train, \u2026 so now I have to make alternate plans on how to get home,\u201d said Jennifer Charles of Lyndhurst, New Jersey, who was stranded for hours at Penn Station after traveling to the Big Apple to pick up her daughter.<\/p>\n

Authorities \u2014 including NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani \u2014 should have done a much better job alerting the public of the anticipated commuter apocalypse, said Charles, 40.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just feel that the people in power should be better organized \u2026 telling people the trains aren\u2019t running, because now how am I supposed to get home?\u201d she ripped.<\/p>\n

\"FansAbout 1.2 million soccer fans were expected to hit the hosting NYC[-New Jersey area for the world\u2019s biggest sporting event. USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect<\/p>\n

To add to the area chaos, the NYPD also set up a \u201cfrozen zone\u201d around MSG Saturday to weed out non-ticketholders due to other overlapping events: a Knicks \u201cwatch party\u201d outside The Garden for Game 5 of the NBA Finals, and a 5 Seconds of Summer concert inside \u201cThe World\u2019s Most Famous Arena.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alex Rotali said she was under the impression from various media reports that NJ Transit would run normally until 2 p.m., and was \u201cflabbergasted\u201d to learn it shifted to strictly to World Cup routes 90 minutes earlier.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really aggravating \u2018cause we\u2019re already late\u201d after being redirected numerous times at Penn Station because of the match, said Rotali, who was with her two children and planning to travel to a waterpark in East Hanover, New Jersey, for her son Jamir\u2019s ninth birthday.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI might just take an Uber, to be honest, as expensive as that might be, \u2026 like $90-something dollars, but I have no choice at this point, because it\u2019s gonna take even longer now with everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Soccer fans also found the process confusing.<\/p>\n

In many cases, they arrived at the NJ Transit entrance of Penn Station at 32nd and Seventh Avenue, only to be directed across the street to head north to 33rd St \u2014 which was closed to vehicle traffic and lined with extra buses\u2014so they then walked east on Sixth Ave and enter the line at 32nd Street.<\/p>\n

And then they had to deal with jacked-up prices of $98 for a round-trip from Penn Station to MetLife \u2014 rather than the standard $12.90 fare.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got our [NJ Transit] tickets ahead of time. Very expensive,\u201d said Anna Crew of Waco, Texas, who was wearing a Brazil jersey. \u201cBut then there\u2019s no instructions on how to get [to the trains], but we\u2019ve been able to ask a couple people, and they\u2019ve given us pretty good directions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Former Knick Steve Novak welcomed Saturday\u2019s frantic scene, saying it\u2019s \u201cNew York City at its finest.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have the Knicks and the NBA Finals,\u201d the ex-sharpshooting forward told The Post outside MSG. \u201cObviously, the scheduling didn\u2019t anticipate it\u2026\u00a0And obviously, now that the World Cup is in town, it\u2019s just its sports heaven.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mamdani and the city\u2019s Department of Transportation have declared \u201cGridlock Alert\u201d days for each of the eight days a World Cup game will be played at MetLife, running from Saturday through July 19. Besides the Penn Station restrictions and temporary streets closures and bus-only corridors, truck deliveries will be heavily restricted from 30th to 60th Streets, from noon and 11:00 P.M.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The beautiful game made an absolute mess of the Big Apple Saturday, as mass gridlock shuttered Midtown streets…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":265870,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[222,57,22154,9,24,55,54,56,7968,319,2114,2023,58,14771,82],"class_list":["post-265869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-madison-square-garden","tag-metro","tag-new-jersey-transit","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-penn-station","tag-sports","tag-tickets","tag-traffic","tag-us-news","tag-world-cup","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265869\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}