NEW YORK (AP) — New York is welcoming soccer fans from around the planet this summer for the World Cup — and then transporting a vast majority of them to MetLife Stadium in northern New Jersey in at a hefty price.
The home of the NFL's Jets and Giants is set to host eight games, including the final on July 19. It's the latest big event at the 80,000-seat stadium in the Meadowlands a dozen years after the Super Bowl was played there and three years since Taylor Swift's “The Eras Tour.”
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FILE - With One World Trade Center seen in the background, a little girl leaps across boulders forming a breakwater along the Brooklyn Bridge Park on Dec. 27, 2018, in the Brooklyn borough, of New York. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E, File)
FILE - People gather in Times Square to watch a boxing match, May 2, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II, File)
FILE - The Harvest Supermoon rises behind the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn skyline, Oct. 6, 2025, in Jersey City, N.J. (AP Photo/Adam Gray, File)
FILE - General view of the MetLife stadium during the Club World Cup semifinal soccer match between Fluminense and Chelsea in East Rutherford, N.J., Tuesday, July 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Pamela Smith, File)
FILE - The Manhattan skyline is seen behind MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)
The Statue of Liberty, Times Square, Empire State Building, Central Park, Coney Island and shows on and off Broadway and at Radio City Music Hall are atop a long list of tourist destinations.
Major League Baseball's Yankees and Mets each have plenty of home games, including the Los Angeles Dodgers at Yankee Stadium the weekend of the final.
Start with a bagel and a slice of pizza and go from there to any type of cuisine your heart desires. There are 72 restaurants in New York City and the surrounding areas with a Michelin star, and there are quality eats at every price point.
Some of the best steakhouses and Italian can be found all over, especially in Manhattan, and Flushing in Queens features an array of excellent Asian food.
There will be a free one in each of the city's five boroughs: Rockefeller Center in Manhattan, Billie Jean King National Tennis Center — home of the U.S. Open tennis tournament — in Queens, on the East River waterfront and in Brooklyn Bridge Park in Brooklyn, a shopping mall near Yankee Stadium in the Bronx and a minor league baseball stadium in Staten Island.
Another is taking place in Harrison, New Jersey, at Sports Illustrated Stadium at a cost of $10 for adults and free for children 12 and under, though a ticket is required.
A round-trip train ticket from Penn Station in Manhattan to East Rutherford on NJ Transit costs $98 — down from the $150 initially unveiled but still significantly more than $12.90 for other events — and it's not direct. Ticket-holders must buy ahead for a specific time slot, board in one of two designated zones and then transfer at Secaucus Junction.
Fans can also take NJ Transit from Secaucus or Hoboken Terminal. FIFA's official shuttle bus is $20 and departs from Grand Central Station, the Port Authority Bus Terminal, a to-be-determined site in north Midtown or a park-and-ride site in Clifton, New Jersey.
Despite vast lots surrounding the stadium with more than 20,000 spots usually available, the only parking on site will be what FIFA calls premium and limited availability at the American Dream mall. Ride share pickup and drop-off is at the Meadowlands harness racing track.
Allow plenty of time to get in and even more patience to get out. A regular-season football game leads to long lines and logjams, and the logistical complications of no parking or tailgating combined with the amount of fans unfamiliar with the stadium and the transportation there could cause lengthy delays.
AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
FILE - With One World Trade Center seen in the background, a little girl leaps across boulders forming a breakwater along the Brooklyn Bridge Park on Dec. 27, 2018, in the Brooklyn borough, of New York. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E, File)
FILE - People gather in Times Square to watch a boxing match, May 2, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II, File)
FILE - The Harvest Supermoon rises behind the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn skyline, Oct. 6, 2025, in Jersey City, N.J. (AP Photo/Adam Gray, File)
FILE - General view of the MetLife stadium during the Club World Cup semifinal soccer match between Fluminense and Chelsea in East Rutherford, N.J., Tuesday, July 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Pamela Smith, File)
FILE - The Manhattan skyline is seen behind MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Commuters in New York City’s suburbs navigated a gauntlet of car, bus and subway routes to get to work Monday after a strike on the Long Island Rail Road that shut down the nation’s busiest commuter rail system entered its third day.
Unions representing rail workers and the Metropolitan Transportation Agency, which runs the railroad, negotiated for much of Sunday, wrapping their talks around 1 a.m., but failed to reach an agreement, despite pressure from the National Mediation Board and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul. A spokesperson for union workers said negotiators returned to the bargaining table early Monday.
Katie Dolgow, who teaches first graders in Manhattan, said it had already taken her an hour just to travel from Long Island to Queens as more commuters turned to the region's already notoriously gridlocked roads. But her big concern was coming home.
“I have to get my son at daycare by 5:30. It's going to take me longer getting home. I'm a teacher, I'm going to have leave work at 1:30,” she said.
Picketers were out early.
“We're just asking for a reasonable cost of living adjustment on our wages,” Byron Lee, a locomotive engineer, said outside Penn Station in midtown Manhattan. “People think that you don't deserve it.”
The LIRR serves hundreds of thousands of commuters who live along a 118-mile-long (190-kilometer-long) land mass that includes Brooklyn and Queens in New York City and the Hamptons, a summertime playground for the rich and famous near its eastern tip. The railroad has long provided commuters relief from its rush-hour clogged highways.
Most of its riders live outside New York City in two counties populated by nearly three million people.
The railroad closed down and workers went on strike at 12:01 a.m. Saturday after five unions representing about half its workforce walked off the job for the first time in three decades.
The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers and the Transportation Communications Union said in a statement Sunday that workers “are not asking for special treatment — they are simply fighting to keep up with the skyrocketing cost of living in the New York region after years without a raise.”
The unions and the MTA have been negotiating a new contract since 2023, but talks have stalled over salaries and healthcare. The Trump administration got involved in September after unions asked for the appointment of a panel of experts, but they still couldn't reach a deal.
At a news conference Sunday, Hochul said workers would lose every dollar they would gain with a new contract by remaining on strike for three days.
MTA Chairman Janno Lieber also urged a fast resolution.
“We are headed in a positive direction but we have to get it finished,” Lieber told WABC-TV.
The first to be affected by the walkout — the LIRR's first since a two-day strike in 1994 — were the many sports fans who wanted to see the Yankees and Mets battle or the Knicks’ playoff run at Madison Square Garden, which is located directly above the railroad’s Penn Station hub in Manhattan.
Federal law makes it extremely difficult for rail workers to walk out and even allows Congress to block a strike, but lawmakers have not intervened as they did with the nation's freight railroads in 2022.
Would-be commuters were greeted by train departure boards that listed ghost trains marked “No Passengers” rather than upcoming trains listed by destination.
Essential workers among the roughly 250,000 weekday LIRR riders took buses into the city from six locations on Long Island starting at 4 a.m. Monday. The evening rush-hour commute runs from around 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Hochul, a Democrat, has blamed the Trump administration for cutting mediation short in September and pushing the unions toward a strike. Trump, a Republican, said on his Truth Social platform that he had nothing to do with it.
“No, Kathy, it’s your fault, and now looking over the facts, you should not have allowed this to happen,” Trump said.
Hochul urged companies and agencies that employ workers from Long Island to let them work from home whenever possible.
“It’s impossible to fully replace LIRR service. So effective Monday, I’m asking that regular commuters who can work from home, should. Please do so,” she said.
The MTA has said the unions’ initial demands to raise salaries would result in large fare increases and be disproportionate to other unionized workers' pay.
McCormack reported from Concord, New Hampshire. Associated Press writers Ted Shaffrey and Joseph Frederick in New York; Josh Funk in Omaha, Nebraska; and Christopher Weber in Los Angeles contributed.
A pedestrian walks along an empty track at Mineola train station as Long Island Rail Road workers strike, Monday, May 18, 2026, in Mineola, N.Y. (AP Photo/Heather Khalifa)
Tracks are empty at Mineola train station as Long Island Rail Road workers enter the third day of their strike, Monday, May 18, 2026, in Mineola, N.Y. (AP Photo/Heather Khalifa)
People exit and board buses at the Mineola train station as Long Island Rail Road workers enter the third day of their strike, Monday, May 18, 2026, in Mineola, N.Y. (AP Photo/Heather Khalifa)
Commuters sit on a shuttle bus as Long Island Rail Road workers strike, Monday, May 18, 2026, in Mineola, N.Y. (AP Photo/Heather Khalifa)
Visitors look out at the trains at the West Side Yard from the Vessel on the first day of a Long Island Rail Road workers' strike, Saturday, May 16, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Heather Khalifa)
Tracks are empty at Mineola train station as Long Island Rail Road workers enter the third day of their strike, Monday, May 18, 2026, in Mineola, N.Y. (AP Photo/Heather Khalifa)
