If you’ve read anything before this moment that included the words “World Cup” and “NJ Transit” and “train,” you’d be forgiven for fearing the worst.
They want how much for a ticket? They’re keeping other commuters out of parts of Penn Station for how long?
And if you got out of the subway at Herald Square early Tuesday afternoon, trying to make your way to MetLife Stadium for a 3 p.m. kickoff between France and Senegal, and saw the line winding down 32nd Street and up Sixth Avenue, you’d be inclined to think it might turn out worse than that.
So I’m here to report: The train experience was … fine.
At $98, it was eye-watering, to the point of being prohibitively expensive, yes, as nearly everything associated with this World Cup in America seems to be. But painless, efficient. Pleasant, even.
You came away with the sense those two things were almost certainly related.
“It’s not too crowded, probably because it’s so expensive,” one pregame passenger remarked.
The $98 round-trip fare was down from the initial quote of $150 and then down again from $105 — but still nearly eight times the typical $12.90 to get to Giants-Eagles.
Where the local World Cup host committee found the funds to subsidize a $20 shuttle bus service — those tickets were sold out Tuesday, at least on the buses that rowdy Knicks fans hadn’t junked Saturday night — there were no breaks to be had here.
The closest parking spots, at the American Dream mall across the road from the stadium, retailed for a whopping $225, but for comparison you have to divide that by the number of passengers in the car.
Someone on the train Tuesday said he had booked a parking spot but didn’t use it after hearing horror stories about the delays driving into Saturday’s Brazil-Morocco match.
I left at 11:30 a.m. from my apartment in downtown Manhattan. Twenty-odd minutes on the B train later, I had joined the line of matchgoers — in the colors of both teams, in Kylian Mbappé No. 10s and Zinedine Zidane No. 10s, toting clear bags with their things — as we moved promptly down 32nd Street past a train ticket check, a match ticket check and a security check. Say this: The operation was extremely well-staffed.
Every passenger was given a red bracelet. “This is your ticket,” came the accompanying instruction.
After a brief stop in a corral on the east side of Seventh Avenue, we were directed across the street and down the escalator into Penn Station. From there, riders were waved to the next departing train, rolling out every 10 minutes or so.
Other NJ Transit service out of Penn was temporarily suspended (it was said to be restored by 2 p.m.), so it was a ghost town on the concourses. Poor day to be running Primo! Cappuccino.
Everyone got a seat on the trains, first to Secaucus, and then, after a transfer through an otherwise uninhabited terminal, on to the Meadowlands. The whole ride took about 40 minutes. At the gates by 1 p.m.
“I’ll put it this way: I figured the train would be the least nightmare,” Bryan Knouse, of New York, said after disembarking. “The price gouging on the trains is still egregious, but just not having to deal with the bulls–t.”
Later, filing out of the stadium and toward the rail platform — after Mbappé tried to justify the prices of admission with two goals in France’s 3-1 win — all you got was a simple “Wristbands up!” Then gently fill one train, toot toot, and off we go.
A minor bottleneck, on the way back, at Secaucus. But mostly smoothed over, like any luxury New York service, which, at the price point, is what it is.
