Council Leader Urges City To Activate Ferry To NJ Before World Cup

Thank you ferry much.

The city should activate a ferry from Upper Manhattan to New Jersey before this summer’s World Cup to relieve congestion on bridges and tunnels that cross the Hudson River and open up new commuting options, City Council Majority Leader Shaun Abreu said.

In a letter to City Hall and the NYC Economic Development Corporation on Monday, Abreu (D-Harlem), the Council’s transportation committee chair, noted that the necessary infrastructure already exists at West Harlem Piers at W. 125th Street — and all the city must do is “launch the boats.”

A ferry from 125th Street to Edgewater, New Jersey, would take less than 10 minutes and save “countless trips and hours of sitting in traffic on the George Washington Bridge,” Abreu wrote. The World Cup makes the project “particularly urgent,” he said. MetLife Stadium will host eight World Cup matches, including the final, beginning June 13.

“Ferry service at 125th Street would provide a relief valve, letting fans bypass the George Washington Bridge and the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels entirely and reducing vehicle traffic at some of our most beleaguered chokepoints,” Abreu’s letter said.

City Hall did not respond to a request for comment. EDC told Streetsblog that it “appreciates” Abreu’s proposal and will “evaluate it thoroughly.”

There are already bus connections from Edgewater to MetLife Stadium. Abreu’s team wants to explore adding more direct shuttle service during the games.

A ferry ran between W. 125th Street and Edgewater for much of the first half of the 20th century, serving industrial workers and thousands of silent movie stars when New Jersey was the world’s film hub.

Competition from the George Washington Bridge, which opened in 1931, and the tunnels across the river led to the ferry’s demise. In 2025, the bridge carried about four million cars and 21,000 buses per month, according to Port Authority stats.

In recent years, New York City has revived ferry service in the five boroughs — with more than 7.1 million annual trips.

Abreu isn’t alone in his calls for the ferry’s revival. In a 2025 opinion, then-Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, who represented Abreu’s district from 2014 to 2021, argued that the “revival of trans-Hudson service would offer a lifeline to thousands of commuters, dramatically reducing car dependency, traffic congestion, and pollution.”

Upper Manhattan suffers from some of the region’s worst air quality and a trans-Hudson ferry could connect residents on both sides of the river to jobs, Levine and Abreu argue.

The New York region is hosting what is forecasted to be the most-watched sporting event in history, which will place considerable strain on the area’s transportation systems and public resources. That’s spurred officials to plan to close parts of Penn Station to only World Cup ticket holders for four hours before matches. 

Commuting to games won’t come cheap, either — even by mass transit. NJ Transit plans to charge over $100 for travel to games for tickets that usually cost just $12.90, the Athletic reported on Tuesday. Parking at the stadium will also be prohibited.

New York City, meanwhile, has scaled back its approval of large public events from June 11 to July 19 at the behest of the NYPD.

“We want to make sure that our city is fully prepared for every aspect of this summer, and that means taking these kinds of necessary precautions,” Mamdani told Streetsblog on April 9 about the new policy on large public events.

The city has $10 million from the Federal Transit Administration to use for transit during the games, which Abreu suggested it could use for the W. 125th Street ferry service. There is also $105 million in FTA grant money for the 2026 Passenger Ferry Program and $98 million for the Electric or Low-Emitting Ferry Pilot Program up for grabs, the letter said. Grant proposals are due May 11.

Beyond the World Cup, a W. 125th Street ferry would be a “transformative addition to the city’s transit network” — opening up new connections for New Jersey and New York commuters, Abreu’s letter said.

“Activation of ferry service would meaningfully provide access to historically underserved communities,” he wrote. “Our infrastructure is in place, demand is present, and federal funding is available.”