Last week, in advance of a broader post-Club World Cup meeting that will include members of the World Cup Host Committee, the state police, the department of transportation, the Sports and the Exposition Authority, NJ TRANSIT CEO Kris Kolluri led an internal review with his management team to review their public transportation efforts around the FIFA Club World Cup.
“It’s something called a hot wash,” NJ Transit CEO Kris Kolluri said. “Think of it as a postmortem of the 2025 event. It’s where we try to see where the kinks were, what needs to be fixed, what needs to be addressed — what else needs to be done.”
It’s another step in the planning for the 2026 FIFA World Cup — an event in which cars will not be allowed into MetLife Stadium for any of the eight games that will be played there, including the final.
And it certainly wasn’t the first time these groups have talked.
“The planning and the partnership we have with the host committee, with FIFA, with the State Police, DOT and the Sports and Exhibition Authority is phenomenal,” Kolluri said. “We have been talking to them on a weekly basis, and we will continue to talk to them on a weekly, if not daily, basis leading up to the event.”
The group certainly felt good about the Club World Cup final on July 13, after which more than 20,000 fans were moved away from the stadium and to the Secaucus transfer station by train and bus.
“This was a good trial run,” Kolluri said. “Things will be slightly different in 2026, but I think the fact that our plan worked this year, that we moved 20,392 people per hour, tells me that we have the logistics stuff down.”
Unlike the Super Bowl here in 2014, which still haunts transportation officials, there were no post-event social media uprisings against NJ Transit.
In fact, an FDU poll released earlier this week, showed N.J. residents have a favorable view of NJ Transit. One in three gave NJ Transit a grade of an ‘A’ or ‘B’ – and more than two in three said ‘C’ or better (with 18% undecided).
No matter how you slice it, it’s far better than the straight ‘F’s’ the gubernatorial candidates recently gave NJ Transit during the primary debates.
Kolluri was delighted to see the numbers. He said they match the extensive polling NJ Transit does of its riders.
He also said this: “We’re only as good as our next rush hour.”
Kolluri, a highly regarded transportation expert who took the lead as CEO of NJ Transit in January, spoke with BINJE Wednesday on a variety of topics regarding NJ Transit. Here’s more of the conversation, edited slightly for space and flow.
BINJE: The FDU Poll findings were nice, but you know that public transportation systems are graded daily. Give us an overview of where NJ Transit is now?
Kris Kolluri: The poll numbers are great to see. And the governor obviously gets extraordinary credit, because he has been singularly focused on New Jersey Transit for seven years. So, I think it’s a validation that the hard work he put in over seven years is beginning to pay off from a customer perspective.
But there’s a lot more work to be done for sure. We still have infrastructure problems on the Amtrak corridor. And the governor has authorized us to now completely modernize our train cars and our buses, which we’re doing.
Our work is just starting.
BINJE: Let’s turn to the Club World Cup, which certainly can be viewed as a warmup for the big event in 2026. How do you think it went?
KK: The fact that on Sunday night after the final, we moved 20,392 people outward bound, was a testament to my colleagues. They really pulled it together.
I have to say, it was an all–hands-on-deck effort. To the governor’s credit, he was on text with me and the entire team – including the state police – every game. We were constantly talking about what was happening.
For example, whenever we had a problem on the roadway, we were so tied in with the state police that they were able to move people out of the way. The DOT had tow trucks ready. This was very highly choreographed. You should expect the same level, if not more, in 2026, because that level of coordination is going to be so important.
BINJE: We made the trip that day (see our story here). We certainly noticed a volunteer army. Break that down?
KK: We recruited more than 200 of what we called ambassadors from our own workforce. We spent months and months getting all the logistics down — making sure we had all sorts of signs, including many with native languages based on the teams that were playing. We tried to curate it as closely as possible to meet the needs of the fans.
BINJE: Let’s break down the post-game outward-bound effort. How do you move so many people so quickly?
KK: Understand this was not our first time doing this. The plans we put in place are for when there will be 50,000 to 60,000 people at MetLife Stadium, whether it’s a concert or a big sporting event.
When we get to that number, we start deploying buses. We can comfortably fit about 1,200 people on a train and we can continually bring trains in and out. We can fill a train in 10 minutes. But each bus can carry up to 100 people. We can have up to 80 buses in use. In fact, we just got a grant that will enable us to create a temporary bus terminal at MetLife Stadium for the World Cup.
The lesson learned at the Super Bowl was that you need to provide a number of options. You cannot have a crush of 30,000 people showing up at one point when the event ends. You have to meter it and distribute the fans so we can absorb 20,000 people in one hour, which is what we did.
Nobody was standing at any given point. Our entire model is premised on the fact that if we keep people moving, they’re happy, if they’re standing still, they’re not happy. That’s our entire mission.
BINJE: Everyone said the Club World Cup will be nothing like the 2026 World Cup, which will be exponentially bigger in every way. Except one: The number of people attending games at MetLife. That number doesn’t change. Talk about how the Club World Cup may have been more of an apples-to-apples comparison than people may have estimated?
KK: The one difference is going to be that parking for attendees may only be available at off-site locations such as American Dream, not at the stadium. That’s why it’s going to be so important for us to be completely coordinated with the state police, FIFA, the host committee, the Sports and Exposition Authority, everyone involved.
BINJE: Of course, you have your day job, too — moving commuters around the region. Your grade in the poll also came from those efforts. Give us an update on that, starting with the modernization of the system you spoke of?
KK: The board just approved the modernization of the entire fleet of rolling stock. That means all the train cars will be modern in the next five years — and the only thing we’ll have on the system in the next 10 years will be double-decker cars. As for our buses, every one will be new by 2031. That’s never happened before in the 45-year history of the of the agency.
This was my highest priority. I told the governor, ‘You can’t run a 21st Century rail system using cars built in 1970s; it just doesn’t work.’ He has been very supportive. In fact, we are hoping to get many brand-new multi-level cars in 2026, before the World Cup.
BINJE: We don’t want to jinx you, but you have to be feeling good, yes?
KK: We are feeling good, but this is not a victory lap. It merely says we are trying to do the right thing.
We all know that we have a lot more work to do — and we’re eager to get to work. And we all know this: We are only as good as the next rush hour. But this summer, the system is holding up despite some challenges, and that’s a great thing.
