After Taylor Swift played three nights at MetLife Stadium last summer, you could practically hear the sigh of relief in New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy’s tweet praising his state’s mass transit agency.

“@NJTRANSIT successfully transported 80,000 Taylor Swift fans via trains and buses to @MetLifeStadium,” the Democrat said on social media.

The trains haven't always run on time. The 2014 Super Bowl featured extreme delays getting American football fans in and out of the New Jersey swamp where the stadium is located. Now Murphy is hoping he'll have a repeat of the Swift experience — not the Super Bowl — when the World Cup comes to town in 2026.

The recent decision by international soccer officials to hold not just some games but also the World Cup final at MetLife marks a major victory for Murphy, a nationally ambitious Democrat who co-owns a professional female soccer team. But it raises the stakes for one of the two-term governor’s top priorities since taking office: Fixing New Jersey Transit.

Getting people back and forth to MetLife — the New Jersey stadium that’s home to both the New York Jets and the New York Giants — has caused major disasters for NJ Transit in the past. The nation’s third-largest transit system also struggles with ongoing financial uncertainty. It now faces a $1 billion budget deficit next year and has no plan to close the gap, even after announcing fare hikes this winter.

The stadium — to be renamed New York New Jersey Stadium for the World Cup — is just six miles from Manhattan’s Central Park but may as well be on another planet.........

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