To enable New York and New Jersey to successfully host eight matches of the World Cup in 2026, our Program Director of Transportation Planning, Trent Lethco, supported FIFA's Local Organizing Committee (LOC) in developing an integrated, holistic mobility plan to accommodate over a million new people in the system without causing any disruptions to the daily commute.
The FIFA World Cup 26™ is a 39-day tournament, with eight of its matches including the final are slated to be played at the MetLife Stadium outside of New York City in East Rutherford, New Jersey. During the tournament, parking at the stadium for general spectators will be extremely limited—meaning that eight Superbowl-scale crowds will need to use New York and New Jersey’s already well-used transportation system to attend the games. Simultaneously, there will be fan activations happening across the region along with the many celebrations of the summer.
On weekdays, New York and New Jersey’s transit networks are full of people using them to go about their daily lives. For a mega-event like this to be successful, the region will need holistic solutions to help locals stay and continue using the system, rather than simply telling them to go away during the Tournament period.
To add to the complexity, there is no single-point-of-contact for all of the transportation agencies involved. The local organizing committee continues to be a convener, a coordinator, and a catalyst for collaboration and deliver the mobility plan that complies with FIFA guidelines and that also ensures that people can travel conveniently safely and enjoyably around the region to go to either MetLife Stadium or the FIFA Fan Fest™ at Liberty State Park in Jersey City.
Our Program Director of Transportation Planning, Trent Lethco, helped the local organizing committee develop the Mobility Plan that will allow locals to go about their daily lives or enjoy their summertime plans in New York New Jersey while the region welcomes the one million visitors taking advantage of everything New York New Jersey has to offer.
As part of the strategy, Trent led coalition-building amongst all the different agencies, making sure that everybody's thinking was aligned across jurisdictional boundaries to develop integrated solutions to the transportation needs that the FIFA World Cup 2026™ is going to create.
After a series of workshops and presentations, Trent led the development of clear information and materials that agencies could use in their own individual planning exercises, which helped all of the agencies prepare their own responses to the transportation needs as a part of the tournament. Their responses were then stitched together into an integrated holistic mobility plan that addresses transportation on public transportation, in private networks, roadways, railways, and waterways to so that visitors can come to New York and New Jersey and have a great experience, and that everybody else who needs to go about their daily lives can do so.
The integrated plan is still in the process of being finalized, and the LOC is now moving from planning into operational readiness.
