back to travel; would love to hear more (perhaps tomorrow) about people's experiences, traffic and especially driving into the city.

thanks,

Mary

bellastar,
what an awful day you had. I am sorry for that and for the loss of such a young person..I hope this is resolved soon. And I agree with you completely ~

Can anyone explain to me why the strike has resulted in such overcrowding in Penn Station? I'm a New Yorker, and I don't understand why the fact that the subways and buses aren't running means that there are more people in a commuter train station.

This isn't an idle question, because I have to go through Penn Station on either Friday or Saturday to get a NJ Transit train to my sister's for Christmas. Assuming the strike is still on, I'm thinking Saturday might be the better bet, because the weekday commuters won't be going through Penn Station then.

Alternatively, I could take a PATH train to Hoboken, and then catch a NJ Transit train in Hoboken. Any thoughts?

Bree - I'm assuming it is because of commuters from Queens who need to hop off the LIRR short of Long Island. I live in the E. Village and took the PATH to work today at the World Financial Center with no problems. Good luck!

thanx scarlett

Bree: Previous poster is right- one reason is large numbers of subway commuters who go to points in Queens are now using the LIRR trains to Woodside and Jamaica Station. There may be other reasons too.

You are much better off taking the PATH to Hoboken to get a NJ transit train, and Sat is probably better too. Good luck!

marymarra- don't know if your question is a practical one or not-only have 2 minutes to answer you this am- there have been some lifting of travel restrictions this am- 5th and Madison and maybe some other avenues are fully open to traffic now, whereas yesterday they were restricted so emergency vehicles could get around.
If you are only driving for pleasure, you need to have 3 additional riders to travel in your car below 96th Street. Once you are south of 96th though you can have fewer riders, but NYers on foot would appreciate any ride offer from you. Go to NYC.gov for full details.

Sun's rising- here we go again!

I think some of the overcrowding at Penn is because people who work in the other boros but live in Manhattan now have to take the LIRR to get to work instead of the subways and buses they usually take. Also, a lot less people are driving because of the 4 person minimum and are taking PATH in from NJ. That's the only thing I can think of.

I think the worst part is actually trying to buy a ticket to get on the railroad. Yesterday, where I live in Forest Hills, the wait just to buy a ticket was 3 hours. I took a chance and got on the train without one and prayed I wouldn't be charged double for buying on the train. No one ever came around to collect tickets so I actually got a free ride!

Hearing what TWU workers earn on average makes me wish I never bothered to go to law school. Some of them earn more than I do and I'm still paying off my student loans. I could have not bothered with college, grad school and law school, made more money and not have any loans to pay off. I was always told it pays to have an education. I'm going to get my parents for this one!

I wasn't very surprised to learn in this thread that Tranist workers are "unskilled".

I suppose just about anyone can repair complicated, multimillion dollar subway cars these days. They must be put together like lego trains or something- welding isn't skilled, right? Any guy off the street can do it safely.

Repairing track can be improvised on the spot. There is no engineering or construction skill involved in repairing 100 year old tracks used 24 hours a day. Getting some day laborers to do it won't compromise safety. We also don't need to have known, experienced people doing it. Terrorists have no interest in sabotaging the Subways.

Fare collection? No skill there. Automated fare collection turnstiles and vending machines don't need skille computer technicians when they break. They can probably used a trained monkey to collected all the Ones and Zeroes in a bucket, right?

Retirement at age 55 is totally unreasonable. Just because you worked outdoors in an unheated, un-air-conditioned, noisy train shop for 25 years doesn't mean that you can retire- get to work, you bums. It's exactly like an office job where your biggest problem is getting caught posting on Fodors during work hours. No one is ever injured or killed in a train shop.

Working at 3AM as a token clerk is unskilled and unecessary. Tourists are never hassled or attacked in the Subways and never need assistance from a live person. Any jerk can face off a mugger or rapist.

Driving a train is EASY. Surely someone can do it 12 hours a day with no bathroom breaks without compromising safety and performance. Since no one in NYC relies on the Subway, it is an unimportant job and should be paid $15,000 a year, it's not like thousands of people at a time are entrusting their lives to the driver. You do NOT want him satisfied with his pay. He should be daydreaming or thinking about his other jobs.

Yes, bus drivers make $60K a year. With overtime. What kind of lazy, unskilled person works 70 hours a week and expects more pay? They should work for free under threat of being fired like the rest of us because they are 'salaried'. Giving all your excess productivity to your boss without compensation is smart economics. Besides, everyone knows Bus Drivers are morons. If they were smart they would have a college degree (in something useful like English) and work in an office for 1/2 the money and no benefits.

Yes, those Unions are awful. No one who is productive or skilled is ever fired in America. All 30,000 GM employees who were fired this holiday season were slackers. Merck had 7,000 goldbrickers hanging around, it has nothing to do with bad publicity or court cases that ended up badly affecting the bottom line- it's all the workers fault for not being productive.

I don't know about you, but I get all my unbiased labor news from the NY Post (owned by the owner of NYC's most expensive house) and the NY Daily News (owned by a major real estate developer currently negotiating deals with the MTA).

Look, the MTA is looking out for Average Joes like me. That's why they wanted to sell $1Billion worth of land for $300 Million to build a stadium. Otherwise the extra $700 Million would go to pay those no good union workers. As a public agency owned by taxpayers, it would be unaccceptable if they sold their property at market value. I also appreciate the 2nd, secret set of books they keep. Otherwiise everyone would know what they could and could not afford to pay workers.

Bellastar--appreciate your info; we would of course give anyone a ride, but we are merely driving into the city and parking, so just trying to figure it out if the hassles are (sadly) worth going at all.

thanks,

Mary

P.S. again not minimizing the profound hassles this is causing to New Yorkers; I live in a city, too.

Well, at least QC has offered an opposing view - I was somewhat surprised at the almost unanimous opposition to unions and the strike on this thread. But...QC weren't you the one that admonished us earlier to "stay on topic"?

Hi Mary Marra. I think your trip will be fine. Just try to time your arrival into the city with care. If it were me, I would enter after 8pm, when there will be more inbound lanes on bridges and tunnels..which route are you taking? I would say, and I don't pretend to be an expert, that if you can come at night, the later the better. Once you get here, expect traffic until you dump the car; again, I am not sure where you are staying but if you tell us maybe we can give some help on where to put the car. Here is my small experience yesterday: I left my house in the East 50s at 10am; drove down to Tribeca to pick up my Mother at her assisted living and then drove her to the Upper East Side for her first chemo appointment. In an hour then, I made it by car from midtown east down to far west side (opposite WTC site) and back to East 70s. She walked in to her appt at 11am on the dot! Going home there was more traffic but all went well, if slowly, except for some creep who sideswiped my mirror and broke it while he was speeding! across 72nd street! My Mother went home via car service, which arrived ten minutes after we phoned them. As I said before, I saw many many free cabs and no one even looking for a ride. But that was on the far east side and I am sure things are very different in busier areas. And remember that if a cabbie tries to rip you off, write down the number. And when you get into the cab, ask right away how much he is charging to go where you want. Well that is my very small, albeit a bit rambling, contribution. I will report back at the end of today.

QC, from someone who REALLY knows what goes on inside GM plants, was a vendor, lives with a GM retiree engineer and millwright (retired at 51) and saw daily what the real story was at 3 plants in the Midwest (one the biggest train factory in the world for many years)- your argument is logical and seems correct- BUT it isn't.

The Unions in many venues, especially the USA automotive industry, have silently and over time greatly helped kill their goose who laid golden eggs.

This NYC transit union goes the same route as at least 40 I have seen and studied in the Midwest. Way, way too far in protecting jobs and seeking "security" for all jobs, be they skilled, unskilled or anywhere in between.

We have LOTS of people in academia, retail, wholesale, service who work outside, inside, all night long (24 hour libraries/medical/nursing etc. in my case) and who study far beyond Masters Degrees who don't make $60,000 a year and in the higher housing areas of the USA as well. Social workers who take their lives in their hands every day just trampsing where they roam make 1/2 of that, QC.

And the Unions are highly, highly corrupt. Not a one that I've studied wasn't.

Sounds good like Norma Rae's travail, and they were necessary. But now they are and have been havens for plunderers and deep pockets slackers.

Your 30,000 GM figure- do you know how many of those are receiving benefits galore and are not "bumped" to another arena two states over where they can stand around all day making jokes? Possibily at least a third to a half. Some of the others may actually have to work.

Not to say that management is pearly white with grace. Not at all. But you would be appalled at the things I have seen over not just one decade but increasingly over many decades. I'm too ashamed as a work ethic person who has lived tough physical jobs, as well as seeing all my close ancestors work tougher ones, to admit it. Believe me, I wish it weren't so.

I hope they make a clean sweep of the union heads and pull a Reagan.

The MTA employees have certainly shot themselves in the foot on this one.

The public sympathy is not with the workers.

The Unions need to hire the biggest hotshot PR firm known to man and start spinning this mess.

Hopefully the union "leaders" will rot in jail on Christmas. A jail cell is better than they deserve -- at least it's warm.

And QC's little "defense" of the expressly illegal behavior is hilarious! Thanks for the laughs! What's next?? Proletariat, Unite!?!

You got me going on unions.

This is over the requirement of new union workers paying 1% of their health benefit. Among other things way more innocuous.

Reagan and Guilianni knew how to handle these crooks, with real action.

Major League Baseball is another pathetic union that wants no drug testing in the profession. Last I checked these drugs were illegal, except for union losers. Yes, unions are for losers because they couldn't make it on their own. Unions are obsolete now with government regulations. It just isn't the same as pre-depression labor conditions.

1%. And they bitch about that?

The NY Times is reporting on its website that mediators have set a framework for a settlement that could have the trains running as early as this afternoon. According to the article, the pension demands have been significantly scaled back and the details of the settlement would be worked out AFTER the strikers returned to work.

Yea! Just got a message that it has ended...

Oops, here's the message from CNN...
NYC transit workers union leaders agree to a return to work while strike talks continue, mediator says. Deal must be OK'd by union executive board.

I would not want to be an MTA worker.

GoTravel, I wouldn't want to be a MTA worker either (except for that $60,000). I once had a job as an eighteen wheeler truck driver. I was forced to join the Teamsters. It was made very clear that if you did not do what the union told you to do you could face physical harm. And I'm sure that NYC is a much tougher place than Minneapolis.

The TWU executive board are meeting to vote on sending the members of the union back to work at 1pm. Most people expect that this will pass and that a plan to get the system moving will start right after the meeting. I've heard a lot of different estimates as to how long it will take for the system to be back to normal -- no one is sure what the time frame is at this point. But at least it looks like it's the beginning of the end. I'm here and it's really been tough on a lot of people. I live in the Village so it's not that bad, but I had a friend who lives in Brooklyn sleeping on my couch last night....