New York hires yellow school buses

The big World Cup story around New York right now is not glamorous. It’s buses. Very ordinary buses. But that’s basically the point — the region is trying to move huge crowds to MetLife Stadium without blowing up the budget or repeating the kind of transit mess that still haunts big Meadowlands events. The new wrinkle is a cheaper shuttle plan built around yellow school buses, plus a broader scramble to make airport and stadium trips less painful. ### Why are school buses suddenly part of this? Because moving tens of thousands of fans is expensive, and the fancy option turned out to be a bad fit. The New York/New Jersey World Cup host committee has shifted to yellow school buses for matchday shuttle operations around MetLife, replacing pricier coach-bus service and cutting those shuttle costs by about 75%. That sounds almost absurd until you remember what these buses are good at — short, repetitive hauls of lots of people, not comfort. (nyc.streetsblog.org) For a stadium shuttle, that trade-off can work. ### Why is MetLife such a hard transportation problem? MetLife is a giant venue in the Meadowlands, but it is not embedded in a normal city street grid with lots of redundant transit options. Most fans funnel through a limited set of roads, parking lots, and the Meadowlands rail spur from Secaucus. That setup can handle regular NFL traffic, but a World Cup is different — more international visitors, more first-time riders, more peaking before and after matches, and less tolerance for confusion. (njbiz.com) New Jersey business and transit voices have been warning for months that transportation, not ticket demand, is the real bottleneck. ### What about the trains? Rail is still part of the plan, but not the whole answer. NJ Transit already runs Meadowlands service for major events and says it will also operate service for this summer’s Club World Cup knockout matches and final — basically using 2025 events as a live rehearsal for 2026. The problem is capacity and price perception. Even if trains are the cleanest way in, they cannot be the only valve for crowds this size. That’s why bus capacity matters so much. (njbiz.com) ### Is New York City doing anything on its side? Yes — and this is where the airport piece comes in. Mayor Zohran Mamdani said on May 13 that the city will add an eastbound bus lane on Broadway from 69th Street to Roosevelt Avenue for the Q70 LaGuardia link before next month’s World Cup. The Q70 is already the city’s main free airport shuttle from the Jackson Heights/Roosevelt Avenue hub, and the new lane is supposed to shave delay off one of the slowest local approaches. (njtransit.com) ### Why focus on the Q70? Because LaGuardia is where a lot of visitors will first feel whether the region has its act together. The Q70 already connects the airport to the E, F, M, R, and 7 trains and the Long Island Rail Road at Woodside. Most of its route moves well on highways, but the neighborhood approach in Jackson Heights is where street congestion can eat the time savings. So a small bus lane can matter more than it looks. (nyc.streetsblog.org) ### Is this all just patchwork? Kind of — but smart patchwork. There is a longer-term Meadowlands transitway project moving through design, with NJ Transit approving a $22 million Phase 2 contract in December 2025. That could eventually create a more durable connection among Jersey City, Secaucus, and the sports complex. But that is not arriving in time to solve the 2026 tournament on its own. So officials are using whatever can be deployed fast: school buses, event rail, bus lanes, and operational tweaks. (nyc.gov) ### What’s the real takeaway? The region is backing into a practical answer. Not elegant. Not futuristic. Just practical. If the World Cup transportation plan works, it will be because New York and New Jersey stopped pretending a single silver-bullet project would save them — and started stacking lots of boring fixes that can actually move people. (njbiz.com)