More than 1 million fans are expected to travel to the New York City region for the World Cup. Some of them may have caught headlines about recent infrastructure hiccups. Gothamist takes pride in helping our audience navigate the city. So reporter Ryan Kost wrote this friendly heads-up to visitors.
Dear World Cup fans,
Earlier this week, Mayor Zohran Mamdani released a video welcoming you all to our sweet, smelly city. Like his other videos — he makes so many of them — it’s upbeat and charming and highlights some genuine points of civic pride: our diversity, our 24/7 public transportation system, our walkable neighborhoods, our parks and beaches.
New York really is the greatest city in the world. But it’s also 400 years old, and it shows. Consider this a companion piece to acquaint you with all the structural issues we’ve learned to live with. We’ll fill you in on the subway station where a geyser erupts when it rains, the three-tiered expressway on the verge of collapse and the Penn Station Labyrinth (no minotaur, just NJ Transit).
Mamdani can focus on getting you excited, but if you're a newcomer, we'd like to help you partake in New Yorkers' favorite pastime: complaining about New York.
Let’s start with the airports. We’re in the middle of turning JFK, where many of you will land, into a “world-class global gateway.” But we’re not quite there yet, so for now, just follow the construction signs to the official taxi or rideshare meet point. DO NOT get into an unmarked car with a man who promises to get you to Midtown at a price that seems too good to be true. (We won’t dwell on the LaGuardia sinkhole — it’s been fixed!)
Of course, you could always take the subway. It runs 24 hours a day, something few other systems in the world can say. It’s also a bit of a mess. Mitchell Moss, a professor of urban policy at NYU, put it pretty bluntly: “If you're coming from another planet or another country, this is not an easy system to navigate.”
The system was built by separate companies over several decades, which is why subway cars on the lettered lines are wider than the ones on the numbered lines. It's why some subway stops don't have free and easy transfers despite running right next to each other. It’s also why you should probably just avoid the Fulton Transit Center — everyone gets lost there.
The beautiful Chambers Street station.
The stations (especially Chambers Street on the J line) could use a little love, but they get the job done. Oh, and we don’t do the whole “Mind the Gap” thing here, but at certain stations — looking at you 14th Street-Union Square — you probably should. Once you’re on the train, you may notice it slow down to a careful crawl when moving through certain junctions. Don’t worry. That’s just a function of several lines converging while operating on signals from the 1930s. (For the record we have an ambitious plan to save our mass transit system … but like all ambitious plans, it’ll take some time.)
Debra Laefer, a professor of civil engineering at NYU who studies what lies beneath New York's streets, says we’ve abandoned at least half a dozen subway stations along the way. That’s part of a broader pattern, she said, of a city that has been building on top of itself faster than it could keep track.
Think forgotten burial grounds scattered around city parks, or 150 years' worth of steam pipes, gas lines and wires running under the streets. The dirty secret is that nobody has a complete picture of what's down there — not even the people who are supposed to.
If it rains hard while you're here — and it probably will because it rains here just about every weekend — we'd recommend a certain caution around the 28th Street station on the 1 train. When the sewers back up, a manhole on the uptown platform has a tendency to erupt like a geyser. See, before Manhattan was Manhattan, it was threaded with streams and wetlands.
“The city looks so large and monumental that you might think that nature's been erased from the place, but actually you can't actually erase nature,” said Eric Sanderson, an ecologist at the New York Botanical Garden who has spent decades mapping the city's original landscape. “Nature's here all the time, and what nature wants is to be forest and wetlands and beaches and dunes again.” (That’s also why you can find peregrine falcons nesting on bridges or coyotes combing through Van Cortlandt Park.)
The city only exists because of what Sanderson describes as “this army of people that are out there every day, cleaning, repairing, fixing, keeping things working.” So be kind and thank them for their work.
To get to New Jersey, where the World Cup matches are actually being played, you’ll have to pass through Penn Station. Evidently, Penn Station used to be an architectural marvel with Roman columns and vaulted ceilings. It was demolished in 1963 in a wild act of architectural self-mutilation, and now it’s largely a fluorescent maze. (Gothamist recently broke news on a proposed redesign; authorities just have to figure out how to pay for it.)
From there, you’ll have to catch a NJ Transit train (only $98 roundtrip) to MetLife Stadium. NJ Transit has promised it is ready, although recent tunnel fires have raised a few concerns. The roof of NJ Transit’s rail operations center actually caught fire last week, too. Fingers crossed!
Above ground, there are a few other things worth knowing. The Brooklyn-Queens Expressway has a stretch through Brooklyn Heights — which engineers call the triple cantilever — that is both an architectural marvel and a source of ongoing civic anxiety. We’ve known for at least a decade that it needs some work, but nobody can agree on what exactly we should do to make sure it doesn’t crumble. Thankfully, we’ve bought ourselves some time by reducing traffic, making patchwork repairs and adding sensors that ticket overweight trucks. (Still, if you find yourself on the BQE around Brooklyn Heights, a prayer or two wouldn't hurt.)
The triple cantilever of the BQE is considered an architectural marvel. It is in dire need of repairs, however.
Speaking of collapse, bits of debris have been falling on the Manhattan approaches to the George Washington Bridge for a few weeks now. Nothing structural, though, so just keep your eyes peeled.
Look, we're not trying to be haters. We love this city more than we can say, and we want you to love it, too. So we asked our sources for some off-the-beaten-path recommendations.
Sanderson, the ecologist, suggests skipping the crowded parts of the big parks and heading to the natural areas instead: places like Inwood Hill Park in upper Manhattan, Marine Park in Brooklyn, and the Greenbelt on Staten Island, where you can see what New York City looked like before 8 million people moved here.
Laefer, the civil engineer mapping what lies beneath these streets, recommends a tour of the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant in Greenpoint. That might sound like a punishment, but she says it is genuinely impressive. The city's compost feeds bioreactors that clean the water, and the excess gets sold as natural gas. But if that’s a little too far afield, she recommends just getting on a ferry.
“You will see so much infrastructure” along the East River, she said, and all the major ports as you head to the Rockaways. Modern miracles that keep the city humming.
Welcome to New York. We're glad you're here. Please don’t stop in the middle of the sidewalk.
XOXO,
Your friends in the Gothamist newsroom
