No Car, No Stadium: Welcome to America
How America's car-dependent urban planning collides with a million football fans who need to reach stadiums without vehicles.
Published: June 6, 2026
# No Car, No Stadium: Welcome to America
I was in Dallas. Match at AT&T Stadium in Arlington — technically "Dallas metro area." Translation: nowhere reachable without a car. Google Maps: 28 kilometres. Driving: 27 minutes. Public transit: no results.
My Uber driver, Marcus, has lived in Dallas thirty years. "America wasn't built on trains. It was built on highways. You want to go somewhere, you drive. No car, you're not a complete person."
The 2026 World Cup has eleven US host cities. Only three — New York, Boston, San Francisco — have transit systems that can move fans from hotel to stadium without a car. The other eight are car cities in varying degrees. At Copa America 2024, fans at AT&T Stadium were trapped in the parking lot for two and a half hours after a match. Eight thousand parking spots. Three exit routes. One toll booth operator per route. FIFA's solution: "encourage fans to use public transportation." Arlington has no public transportation.
Marcus has a plan. "During the World Cup, I'm sleeping in my car. Normal day, Richardson to Arlington is thirty-five bucks. World Cup surge pricing — four times minimum. One hundred forty a ride. Four rides a day, five sixty. Eighteen match days. That's about ten grand. One month. So yeah, I'm putting an air mattress in the back."
Dallas expects 400,000 out-of-town fans. Maybe 350,000 without rental cars — which are already 4x normal price if available. Uber/Lyft supply ratio on match days: roughly one car per forty requests. "What happens to the people who can't get a ride?" I asked. "They walk," Marcus said. "Twenty-eight kilometres. Till sunrise."
The World Cup has always had tiers: rich in VIP, normal in normal, poor watching at home. 2026 adds a new tier: can you physically leave the stadium after the match?
Marcus asked me: "These fans spend thousands on tickets, flights, hotels. Then they get here and can't even reach the stadium. You think FIFA thought about that?" I didn't answer. "Because I think," he said, "they did think about it. They just decided it wasn't their problem." He turned the wheel toward Arlington. "So what do you think?" "I think you're right," I said. "And I'm not sure I can write a better line than that."