Fans feel 'gouged' by £111 World Cup train tickets


Fans will have to pay more than $100 to catch a train to MetLife Stadium for the eight World Cup fixtures

The Football Supporters' Association says fans are being "fleeced" and "gouged" after the announcement that a 30-minute train journey to a World Cup game at MetLife Stadium will cost $150 (£111).

The journey from Penn Station in Manhattan to the venue in New Jersey, which is about 18 miles, shows more than an 11-fold increase on the usual $12.90 (£9.50) for a return fare.

There are no concession prices, so children and seniors must also pay the full $150. Shuttle bus tickets are priced at $80 (£59). Both train and bus tickets are non-transferable and non-refundable. Reports this week suggested the price would be $100 (£74), but on Friday operators NJ Transit announced the fare would be higher.

MetLife Stadium - which will be named New York/New Jersey Stadium during the World Cup as part of Fifa's policy on corporate sponsored names - will host eight matches, including an England group game, and the final on 19 July.

This comes after train fares for matches at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, outside Boston, were vastly increased to $80 (£59), with coach tickets costing $95 (£70).

Thomas Concannon, who leads the FSA's England fans' group, told BBC Sport it is "incredibly disappointing" to be hit in the pocket again - on top of the high ticket prices for the matches. "The price is obviously astronomical in terms of what you would expect to pay going to a match, going to a tournament," Concannon said. "This is completely out of the norm from previous tournaments.

"You're supposed to be welcoming fans from around the world. And I think at this stage, fans couldn't feel less welcome. I don't think anyone this time was expecting transport to be free. But we weren't expecting to be gouged, either. That's ultimately what's happened here, and that's just extremely disappointing. We don't understand why."

Travel at the World Cups in Russia and Qatar was free, and the United States had committed to offer the same perk in its host agreement with Fifa.

On Wednesday, New Jersey governor Mikie Sherrill criticised Fifa for not providing any funding. The governor said she would not "stick New Jersey commuters with that tab for years to come" and "Fifa should pay for the rides".

But Fifa responded, saying it had already "recognised the financial strain" on host cities and said travel could - and should - be offered "at cost".

(BBC article continues)

Delivering the delayed Oxford station bridge replacement before and during the 8-day blockade

Delivery of the replacement rail bridge for the Oxford Station upgrade had to be considerably reconfigured before an eight-day blockade to deliver the bulk of work, a senior Network Rail engineer told NCE.

Replacement of the bridge over Botley Road in the centre of the city is a key part of the Oxford Station upgrade being delivered by Kier and Network Rail. The new bridge is both wider to enable a new platform at the station and longer to accommodate more expansive walkways beneath.

The bridge replacement was supposed to take place in summer 2024, but excavations of the road underneath revealed a much different picture to what Network Rail had been expecting. These presented “several significant engineering challenges that fundamentally changed the build design and methodology – but not the end output”, Network Rail principal programme sponsor Giles Clark told NCE.

This significantly readjusted the programme, with the replacement having finally taken place in an eight-day period in February 2026. In the build-up, the engineering teams worked flat out to redesign the scheme for delivery during this window.

And all this was done with the additional pressure from the public, local authorities and MPs who were all clamouring for the reopening of Botley Road as it is a critical artery through the centre of Oxford.

The delays to the project were caused by inaccurate historical records. The infrastructure under Botley Road turned out to be completely different to the data that Network Rail had based its designs on.

“Original records showed that there was a small inverted brick arch beneath the main span that was structural, about 30m long and 1.5m deep,” Clark said. “When we undertook ground penetrating radar we were getting some quite mixed feedback. The reason for that was that the structure was actually 130m long and 3m thick. And it wasn’t all structural – the purpose of it was flood protection; it was actually holding flood water down along that location.”


The inverted brick arch turned out to be 130m long, rather than the 30m shown on record

Once the team opened this up, they discovered that there were utilities beneath that they had been unable to chart – providing an even bigger headache.

“The original programme assumed we would be able to divert the sewer and Oxford’s main water main in parallel, but when we exposed them they were in really poor condition and non-compliantly close to each other,” Clark said. “We had to move them sequentially. That would not have been an issue if it weren’t for the brick arch, which meant that the proposed diversion route no longer existed. We had to agree a new one with Thames Water.”

This fundamentally changed the below-ground works of the scheme. Kier and Network Rail devised an alternative design solution for the inverted brick arch and a new diversion route for the sewer.

“The sewer has ended up going outside the Botley Road corridor. We’ve tunnel bored under the mainline from Becket Street car park to the other side of the railway and taken the sewer off in that direction,” Clark said. “Thames Water was due to divert all its assets but because it went under the mainline, we undertook it and we used Barhale to do it.

“There’s now a large chamber on the west side of the site outside the Westgate Hotel that has been created. It has two functions; it’s partly a retaining wall and it’s partly a chamber that takes the old gravity sewer east under the railway to a second chamber built in Becket Street car park and then flows into the existing sewer system.”

The sewer and water main were not the only utilities that had been obscured by the brick arch – Clark said there were a “plethora of additional utilities and services that weren’t charted and mapped”.

“We’ve now got about 10,000km of new utility cables and pipes going through a 2m corridor that we’ve created,” he added.


Exposure of the brick arch, August 2023

The bridge and railway runs north to south over Botley Road, which runs west to east. The new bridge features three spans.

“The final form of the bridge features a central span with secondary spans on the east and west side of the railway,” Clark explained. “The span on the west side will carry the new line that runs into the new platform 5 and the span on the east side will initially be a footbridge to replace the old one between Beckton Street and the station, but it’s actually identical to the west so it can in future carry an additional line should that plan ever come to fruition.”

Given the relatively tight eight-day allocation given to the engineering team to replace the bridge, it was prudent to do as much preparatory work as possible ahead of time while keeping the railway operating.

In January 2025 rail minister Lord Hendy agreed with Oxford City Council a revised programme for reopening Botley Road. He said the delays to its reopening had been “unacceptable” but promised the key route would become usable again in August 2026.

Roughly 70,000 people walk or cycle through Botley Road weekly to get to the city centre. A walkway had been maintained, but was not ideal.

“There was a really narrow tunnel that was about 1.8m wide and if you think about getting through about 10,000 people per day that was quite a bottleneck,” Clark said.

An outcome of the new bridge scheme is to enable new 4m-wide footpaths and cycleways on both the north and south of Botley Road.

“As part of the revised baseline, we committed to opening up the northern side of the walkway so we could get rid of the old tunnel,” Clark said. “The first part of 2025 was focused around getting this northern walkway in place.”

Where that walkway runs under the bridge, a solution was needed to create abutments for the future bridge while also maintaining a 4m wide path for pedestrians and cyclists. The team devised concrete boxes that sit on the walkways allowing people to pass through.

“There are three distinct boxes: a central box and a smaller box on each side,” Clark explained. “Each of those outer boxes sits on eight 40m deep rotary bored piles.”

Before the boxes’ installation, the piles were trimmed and stripped and a pile cap was created on top to form the foundation slabs of the abutments.

This solution was mirrored on both the northern and southern walkways, but delivered differently.

“On the north side, because we had sufficient space we were able to build the boxes in situ,” Clark said.

This meant that the northern walkway could be completed and opened to the public in 2025 as agreed.


The improved 4m-wide northern walkway along Botley Road – through the new concrete box bridge abutments – was opened in August 2025

“But on the south side, because we lengthened the overall bridge structure, we needed to break out the existing bridge abutment and cut back into the railway by about 15m to create the space,” Clark said.

This wasn’t possible without interfering with the railway, so had to wait until the eight-day blockade. However, some preparatory works were done ahead of time.

During possessions in November 2025, the team installed sheet piles 15m back from the existing south abutment. This marked the point up to which the excavation would be needed to make space for the new infrastructure.

“We originally put in sacrificial sheet piles either side with tie bars to hold the railway in position whilst we excavated down either side to get to the right depth,” Clark said. “There were 12 tie bars that we put in and each took about 24 hours to put through, but the bottom two took just over two weeks to put through so we were pretty certain we were going through some sort of protection slab for the sewer that would have to be broken up when it came to demolition.”

Meanwhile, the boxes for the south side walkway abutments were built away from site in nearby carparks to be installed during the blockade.

The eight-day possession of the railway for the bridge replacement started on 1 February 2026.

“The first activity during the possession was to strip out the track on the four existing lines over the bridge,” Clark said. “That then allowed us to reveal and lift out the bridge decks of the old span, which came in nine sections.”

These sections were lifted out using a 600t crane. “They came up quite easily, we took them out in about four or five hours,” Clark said.


Monday 2 February 2026: Demolition of the old bridge

“We were then able to take apart the old bridge abutment on the south side and cut back to the sheet piles that we’d previously put through. Our specialist demolition contractor Pennys broke out the transition slabs that the previous deck sat on – that was concrete and reinforcement. Once through that the demolition work came to Victorian brick arch and backfill.

“Eventually we had to break out the bottom and that concrete protection slab for what used to be the sewer position. Those were the only parts where we had to use hydraulic machinery; the rest was done using excavators.”

This provided the space to install the boxes for the southern walkway-come-abutment. After the roadway was cleared, the 450t concrete central box was driven into place using a self-propelled modular transporter (SPMT). The smaller east and west boxes – each around 100t – were swung into position using the crane.


Tuesday 3 February: The central box for the southern walkway and abutment was moved into place via SPMT

This paved the way for the main slabs for the central span to be installed.

“The central span was made up of 12 parts in total,” Clark said. “There were four deck slabs, two transition slabs coming off the two ends of the bridge and six crash protection barriers.

“Either side of that we lifted in the individual deck slabs for the east and west structures and we’ll be coming back around May to finish the crash protection barriers for those as they can be done away from railway operation.”


Thursday 5 February: The central and east bridge spans installed

The deck then needed to be waterproofed, which took longer than expected. “We couldn’t have asked for more rain to come down during that period,” Clark commented.

Next came the installation of ballast. “Either side of the new bridge decks we had two concrete slabs that formed a bit of a transition from the bridge into where we would have the bottom ballast for the rail, so we needed to lay two Type 1 transition decks,” Clark said. “Just getting that to compact, given how wet it was, was a bit more of a challenge.”


Friday 6 February: All bridge spans installed ahead of handover for rail systems reinstatement

Handover for the reinstallation of track and systems was managed on the Friday. “The rest of Friday, Saturday and Sunday was for reinstating the track – stressing, welding, reinstating signals – and then reopening the railway.”

Trains successfully resumed service over the new bridge on Monday 9 February.


Trains resumed service over the new bridge on 9 February

The new bridge now has three distinct spans in place of what was a single span and there are enlarged walkways running beneath on both sides of Botley Road. This is the basis for a higher capacity gateway to Oxford for both trains and pedestrians – though it is not fully open yet.

“At the moment, the plan for delivering the new platform 5 and the new western entrance will see works commence in early 2027 with a view to it being in place ready for when East West Rail and Cowley Branch Line need it in probably December 2030,” Clark said.

As for the Botley Road, Network Rail remains on course to reopen it in August, as promised. The simpler part of bringing Botley Road back into operation is fitting out the walkways.

“The south side needs levels, lighting and any other systems that we want to put in – the council might decide it wants CCTV – and then paving it,” Clark said. “Then we can switch the walkway to the south side and that enables us to fit out the north side.”

A much bigger consideration is replicating the inverted brick arch that was discovered beneath the road.

“There still needs to be a flood protection slab,” Clark said. “We need to reinstate a 130m long concrete slab. That’s being built up in six sections. It’s almost like a bow shape; it’s about 3m deep in the main section then it grades out to almost zero on the peripheries.

“We need to put 84 sheet piles in total on either side of the new spans to allow us to excavate down to 3m at the deepest point. We will install deep drainage that will allow water to run from east to west. Then we will build the solid concrete box in the six sections, working from the centre out.”

The slab will be created by pouring a base slab with concrete upstand walls on either side. These “bathtubs” will then be mass filled with concrete until there is a solid slab all the way through, Clark explained.

The drainage will run down the west side and the engineering team will create a 16m deep attenuation tank under the subsurface. It will have a pumping station that takes water out from under the structure and into the attenuation tank and a valve that then discharges the water at a controlled rate into the existing drainage system.

“What we’ll introduce as part of this system – as well as replicating the inverted brick arch’s flood protection – is increased capacity for flood attenuation in the area,” Clark said. The last part will see the road resurfaced before reopening.

Clark is confident that the August deadline will be met: “We set out 10 milestones last February and we’ve hit every single one on time.”


Visualisation of the completed Botley Road bridge and reopened road

Strange, I read it earlier.

Not sure when this service stopped running to Cribbs Causeway and settled on Parkway instead. Was it last autumn that some funding allowed the 19 bus's frequency to be upped to half hourly? Anyway, the funding for that has dried up and it's now back to sort of hourly and an earlier finish. Anecdote not data, having caught it a few times when its frequency had been increased, passenger numbers had responded.

Mark

Route Changes: Historically linked Bath to Cribbs Causeway, the 19 was modified in January 2023 to terminate at Bristol Parkway Station, with the M4 MetroBus covering the rest of the route.

Service Frequency: Funding fluctuations have caused the service to alternate between half-hourly and hourly frequencies. An increase in frequency was reversed due to lack of funding, with First Bus reporting hourly service in April 2026.

Current Service: The route primarily connects Bath Bus Station to Bristol Parkway, with revisions in 2021 and 2026 updating access to areas like Charlton Hayes and adjusting operating hours

Well worth a read:

https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/delivering-the-delayed-oxford-station-bridge-replacement-before-and-during-the-8-day-blockade-26-02-2026/

Lack of spare locos and traincrew at depots

Lack of inter-operability between classes of loco

Few places where there are crossovers to enable rescue locos to reach a failed train conveniently

Lack of lay-by loops and refuge sidings where a train can be placed "out of the way"

The lighthouse was built in 1862 at a cost of £75 by Hennet, Spinks and Else of Bridgwater, based on a design by James Abernathy, whose work was chosen over that of Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

Culprit seems to have been the 6V50 Wembley-Merehead.

Moving again after standing for >3 hours. (passed Kintbury 16:52 and Bedwyn 20:22).

What are the barriers to achieving a rescue in less time?

Interesting the article mentions concrete slabs added in 1940s.   Manvers Street had a tram route until 1939 so wonder if these slabs were part of its track removal and replacement.

Of course with those big rotary diamond saws that fit on front of large bobcat machines, can probably cut the road surface into manageable size pieces in couple of days.  That leaves 5.9 months to remove it and lay new stronger road
...... But as this is a Council run job, it will probably be couple of blokes doing odd bits of work between sitting in their van having long tea breaks which explains the timescale

Not sure this has been mentioned yet, there's a 5-part series with Michael Portillo to be found on the iplayer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002v462/great-japanese-railway-journeys-series-1-1-osaka-to-nagoya

I was called in, urgently, just before the weekend after abnormal test results.  "Day Surgery" ward but I ended up being admitted and only being discharged this afternoon - Monday.  Seeing so many other patients far worse off than I am is very humbling;  I have lost the best part of a stone, weaker on my feet and tubed up, but nothing malignant. Probably a "day surgery" op later in the year.  Discomfort but no pain; brain working ... a bit wobblier on my feet but still, already, well enough to use the bus home.

Swan hit by train rescued by rail staff


Rescuer Jorge, a rail incident officer at South Western Railway, has been described as a "wildlife whisperer"

A swan had a lucky escape thanks to rail staff who rescued the bird after it was hit by a train.

The animal caused minor delays for commuters travelling on the Wraysbury line between Windsor and London Waterloo on Thursday morning.

Staff from Network Rail Wessex and South Western Railway (SWR) were on hand to rescue the injured bird from the tracks before transporting him to a nearby animal centre.

Suffering a broken wing and a leg injury, the swan is being cared for by specialist vets at the Swan Sanctuary in Shepperton.

Warning: Some readers may find the below images distressing

"The Network Rail team were amazing, as always," a statement from the Swan Sanctuary said. "He has been given pain relief and, unfortunately, has a broken wing which has now been strapped, along with an injury to his leg. He'll be under close observation over the coming days, and may require surgery once he's stable."

The sanctuary added it hosts training for staff at Network Rail and the Highways Agency so they are equipped to save animals that wander on to the roads and tracks.


The swan suffered a broken wing and a leg injury after being hit by a train

A mobile operations manager (MOM) from SWR, dubbed a "wildlife whisperer", lifted the bird from the track. In a post on social media, SWR wrote: "Today's unexpected rail drama: a rogue swan causing absolute chaos on the Wraysbury line. Enter Jorge the MOM — part incident officer, part wildlife whisperer — who successfully negotiated the bird's peaceful surrender."


Specialist vets quickly tended to the swan's injuries

British Museum?

Wondering if your leaflet, regarding the arrangements for the buses, has a scoop. Also thinking that even the walk from the station to the Guildhall isn't brilliant from the accessibility perspective, but what's a city to do...

Quote
Big trip planned with a tour company for Italy, France, Austria, Germany. Afraid to book it as to what’s going on in the world. Have never been to Europe!!

18:37 Westbury to Swindon due 19:21
20:12 Swindon to Westbury due 20:56

20:12 Swindon to Westbury due 20:56 will be cancelled.
This is due to a broken down train.
Last Updated:16/04/2026 17:55