Despite frustration with crowded conditions on the LIRR, some New Yorkers haven't forgotten their manners.
As passengers boarded a train at Jamaica Station, a gentleman moved across an aisle, into an empty seat in the middle of a row so an older gentleman could sit down.
"You shouldn't have to climb over anyone to sit down," the younger man said to the elderly one, who smiled in appreciation.
Some bosses, it would appear, are wearing a new hat – that of chauffeur.
“We had to pick up most of our employees,” said Santina Matwey, office manager in the Long Island City office of Ray Bari Pizza -- See the site.
She and two others have been transporting food preparers, servers, delivery personnel from areas in Brooklyn, Queens and downtown Manhattan to the three Manhattan restaurant sites. In one day alone the regional manager from Hicksville tanked his car up to the tune of $120.
Providing transportation was just one response employers expected, according to a pre-strike poll of members of the Human Resources Association of New York -- www.nyshrm.org.
What else are bosses doing to help keep the workplace humming?
The transit strike didn’t deter many family and friends of Rikers Island inmates on Wednesday, the first day of visiting hours since MTA buses shut their engines.
In the absence of the 101 bus family members did what they could to cross the bridge, whether it was taking a dollar van, which actually costs $2, or waiting for the Department of Corrections’ buses to give them a ride to their incarcerated loved ones.
DOC spokesman Tom Antenen said the department considered canceling visiting hours if there weren’t enough staff members to accommodate them but decided against it since many Rikers Island employees drive to work anyway. For those that don’t, free bus service was provided at pick up stops in Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx and Manhattan. The DOC also started taking family members across the bridge in buses for free. But that wasn’t cheering anyone up.
“I had to take a $60 cab and God knows how much I got to pay to get back,” said Michelle Williams, 36, of Sheepshead Bay, who was visiting her husband. “He has to have his visitors. Everybody I know [with a car] had to work.”
The strike may have helped Williams find a new friend though. Concerned about the price of a cab, her husband hooked her up with his co-inmate’s girlfriend, Joanne Boris, 44, who also lives in Sheepshead Bay. They shared the cab and their frustration over the transit strike. --Jerome Burdi
For the cash-conscious, time-pressed New Yorker, bicycling has emerged as the absolute best way to get around the city in this time of no subways or buses. With a bike, there is no haggling with unscrupulous taxi or livery cab drivers, no gridlocked traffic jams on 96th Street, and two wheels sure are a lot faster than two feet.
But it’s not all smooth cycling in Manhattan. The camaraderie that used to exist among bike riders in the city has been replaced these strike days with an “every rider for himself” ethos. You can see it in the way riders cut each other off headed up 6th Avenue or down Broadway.
Perhaps it’s just a kind of protectiveness coming from fearless riders who use these bike lanes everyday, and suddenly find the road clogged with the cautious, weekend bikers from Brooklyn.
These newbies are easy to spot. Their self-conscious riding style suggests they would never have considered bringing a bike into Manhattan before. And in these days of frayed nerves and freezing winds, it’s every biker for himself.
Traveling uptown from lower Manhattan to 33rd on a PATH train this morning was a breeze.
Most workers and riders seemed to be in fine spirits. One of three twenty-something gals carrying a container of cookies joked with the train engineer about "making the people who are keeping the trains running happy. "
Her friend chimed in: "Maybe we should give these out at the picket lines and get those people back to work."
"Pensions, cookies. Cookies, pensions," she laughed. "What would you rather?"
It would seem, at least for the strike’s duration, that for some 11 a.m. is becoming the new 8.
At 10:50 a.m. Alix Friedman, a media relations director, was waiting in her Park Slope home for a colleague to pick her up, this so they could get to the Brooklyn Bridge no earlier than 11, this so they could drive across with fewer than four people.
Her strategy yesterday for getting to her job at the 92nd Street Y on the Upper East Side? To have a car service pick her up at noon, so as to avoid the 11 a.m. rush for the bridges.
Still, her morning was productive. Before leaving the office yesterday, she packed up folders and e-mailed files to herself that she accessed at home this morning. "I can get a lot of thinking done at home," she said, "even in three hours."
(Check http://blog.92y.org/ to see what 92nd Street Y classes have been cancelled.)
Usually swarming with commuters at 8:30 am on the Wednesday before Christmas, the 14th Street entrance to the Union Square subway station this morning showed little sign of life. Just stacks of unread amNewYorks with the headline "When will it end?"
And Gregory Sansone, manager of the Union Square Holiday Market -- http://www.nycgovparks.org/sub_things_to_do/upcoming_events/events.php?id=20888 – stationed in a security booth. How did he get to work? "I live across the street," said Sansone, who was hoping for a better shopping crowd today than yesterday when the market opens at 11 a.m.
At the nearby farmers’ market -- http://www.cenyc.org/HTMLGM/maingm.htm – Beth Linskey, proprietor of Beth’s Farm Kitchen -- https://www.bethsfarmkitchen.com -- in Stuyvesant Falls, N.Y. drove her van to town last night. While the regular subway crowd was nowhere to be found, one man hoofing it to work earlier, she said, took a detour though the market and bought some jam. She, too, is hoping for better things to come.
New York City Transit said about 1,000 workers from both the Transport Workers Union Local 100 and Amalgamated Transit Union reported for work yesterday.
"We will provide for the safety of any employee who wants to come to work and where possible put them to work," said TA spokesman Paul Fleauranges.
But he cautioned, "That doesn't mean service per se."
The TWU has been distributing fliers urging workers to honor the strike. Union officials have said some workers have reported to work.
"For anyone to cross pickets lines, especially if they are going to reap the benefits achieved from the blisters on our feet and the frostbite on our skin, is a moral injustice," said Rob Davenport, a TWU organizer at the 240th St. Maintenance Shop in the Bronx.
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