To the people who are paying $200 for an Uber to leave the U.S. Open, I have read the New York Post story about you, and I see you, and I hear you, and I am here to offer a solution: Take the train.
The U.S. Open grounds are directly attached to the Mets–Willets Point station of the 7 train and the LIRR. You can recognize the LIRR by its janky little station, and the 7 train by its purple colors and the number 7. MTA wayfinding can be a little confusing for people unfamiliar with the system, but I have two points of good news for you: It is still easier to navigate than swaths of nondescript concrete, and if taxi lines are long enough to last 40 minutes, you will have enough people leaving at the same time to ease the process.
Scared of getting lost or getting on the wrong train? There is no better time to navigate a subway station than after a sporting event, when you can just follow a crowd of people who do know where they're going. Worried about trains running at 1 a.m.? One of the rare bragging rights that American public transit has over its European counterparts, with the notable exception of Copenhagen, is the existence of 24-hour metro systems. New York City's night service is impressively comprehensive, with late-night headways of 20 minutes. Train is delayed? You have real people in the same situation with whom you can sympathize. Always remember: You could be paying $200 for an Uber that will never show up instead. Read something about how the subway is a Mad Max–style murder zone and/or filled with mutant rats, at all times but especially at 1 a.m.? Don't worry, you'll be with a lot of new friends. And surely making a lot of new friends, even if some of them may wind up being New York Mets fans, is a nicer experience than participating in a bidding war over your own special delivery box back to your home or hotel.
Of course, an Uber representative speaking to the New York Post will try to sympathize with your experience by blaming "government mandated costs" rather than, say, the laws of geometry that will always make packing people into individual cars within a limited space extremely inefficient. If you are trying to take a car directly out of a massive sporting event, you will always lose.
There does exist a workaround. If you want to be more efficient about the car experience, you can always engage in creative problem solving. Get on the train for just a few stops, get off, and then call for a cab in an area with much lower demand. In any case: Real winners take the train.
