The 2026 World Cup kicks off Thursday, MetLife Stadium has eight matches on the calendar including the July 19 final, and a question that began as a joke on social media has spread well beyond the walking crowd. If a 14-mile route from Manhattan to East Rutherford can be done on foot in six hours, what would it look like in running shoes? Roughly two and a half hours for most half marathoners. Two flat for the quicker ones. Cheaper than a $98 NJ Transit ticket. On paper, irresistible.
The honest answer is no.
The walkers who already proved it can be done
Two people have covered the route, and both did it walking. Craig Ferguson, a Scottish fan who walked from Los Angeles to Boston earlier this year to raise money for men’s mental health, made the trek and posted it on Instagram. Long stretches of road with no real shoulder, no protection from traffic, and almost nothing that resembled the fan-zone walking culture you find on the way to Wembley or San Siro.
The New York Times writer Alex Wolfe and the photographer Thomas Wilson tried it too. Their account ran on June 7. Ferry from West 39th Street to Weehawken, up the Liberty Steps, then north through West New York, Guttenberg and North Bergen. Six hours later, they reached the gates, a pace that lines up with the average walking speed for adults over a long day. “A maze of connector roads, parking lots and concrete barriers surrounded us,” Wolfe wrote. “Cars approached from every direction. We tiptoed along curbs or walked directly on the road itself.” A construction-closed pedestrian bridge at the American Dream mall forced them to dart across Route 120 in pieces. They made it. Then they realized they had no plan for getting home.
Why running it is worse than walking it
Walking and running share a route, not a risk profile. Drivers expect a person at 3 mph. They have far less time to react to someone moving at 8 mph, especially on a shoulder that vanishes every few hundred yards. Your typical long Saturday run assumes pavement built for humans. This route is the opposite.
New Jersey law bans pedestrians from the limited-access highways that ring the stadium, and troopers say they will enforce it. “Pedestrian traffic is strictly prohibited on the roadways surrounding MetLife Stadium,” Sgt. Charles Marchan of the New Jersey State Police told reporters. “Walking on these roadways creates a significant safety hazard for both pedestrians and motorists.”
Alex Lasry, who runs the New York New Jersey Host Committee, was more direct. “Do not walk,” he said. “You are going to be putting yourself, you are going to be putting law enforcement and people on the road in danger if you walk to the stadium.” The New York City Department of Transportation, asked by NBC New York about the chatter online, said it “would strongly discourage this type of behavior.” None of those officials are going to be more sympathetic to a fan in race kit and a Garmin.
The $98 train ride pushing runners to consider their feet
The reason runners are even asking is money. A normal off-peak round trip from Penn Station to the Meadowlands runs about $13. NJ Transit set its World Cup fare at $150, then walked it back to roughly $98 after public backlash from both Governor Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey and Governor Kathy Hochul of New York, who posted on X that “charging over $100 for a short train ride sounds awfully high to me.” A shuttle bus from midtown is $80 round trip. Parking at the American Dream mall runs about $225 and has to be booked in advance. A family of four on the train is looking at close to $400 before anyone buys a ticket, a hot dog or a scarf.
NJ Transit chief executive Kris Kolluri told reporters the agency is on the hook for $62 million to host the tournament and that grants covered only $14 million of it. “This isn’t price gouging,” he said. “We’re literally trying to recoup our costs.” FIFA disagrees, and so do plenty of fans, but the fare has held.
The runner’s reality check
If 14 miles sounds like a manageable Sunday for you, the route is still wrong on every other count. There are no aid stations. Sidewalks vanish at Route 9 and again near Paterson Plank Road. Overpeck Creek, by Wolfe’s account, smelled like trouble. The final approach involves dashes between live traffic lanes. You would be running in July heat, through industrial corridors, breathing diesel off the New Jersey Turnpike. Picture every condition long-distance training teaches you to avoid, then sign up for all of them at once.
It is also worth remembering what you would be running toward. The players inside are covering about seven miles a match. Twice that just to reach kickoff puts you in worse shape than the strikers you came to watch.
The two short walks the Host Committee actually endorses are last-mile stretches. One is a 1.3-mile signed route from the rideshare drop-off at Meadowlands Racing & Entertainment, where Uber and Lyft drivers are geofenced. The other is a 10 to 20 minute crossing on enclosed pedestrian bridges from American Dream, open only to fans with prepaid parking. Even those can stretch closer to 30 minutes per mile when 80,000 people funnel in beside you.
So is it possible? Most readers of this site could cover 14 miles on autopilot. Should you? Save the long miles for a race built for them. If you want a true long-distance day on foot, point yourself at a walking marathon or any course with a finish line that does not sit behind four lanes of live highway traffic. MetLife match days are June 13, 16, 22, 25, 27, 30, and July 5 and 19. Book the train, the shuttle or the parking spot now, and let Ferguson keep the bragging rights.
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