NEW JERSEY — The American train network is simply awful. After being here one week, I am pining for Avanti West Coast. In fact, a journey on Britain’s inferior slop would feel like a Japanese bullet train after trying to get anywhere petrol-free in the States.
The World Cup has highlighted just how substandard the network is. Why build these stunning, almost intergalactic stadiums so far out of town, and not factor infrastructure into the projects?
Even in New York, the city that never sleeps, where you can get Chinese food at 5am on a Tuesday, there is no direct train from its epicentre to its largest sporting arena, the venue for the greatest sporting spectacle on earth – the World Cup final.
To travel the 10 miles from Penn Station to the MetLife Stadium, there is a way. The costs, however, are eyewatering.
It was revealed before the tournament started that the local transport body was planning to charge a whopping $150 (£114) return for a journey that is slightly shorter than King’s Cross to Wembley.
