It is Day 2 of the New York City Transit strike, and the whole city is more then a little fed up. The brief story is that the MTA (Metro Transit Agency) and the TWU (Transit Worker's Union) can't seem to agree on pension terms. So the transit workers went on strike as of Monday night at midnight. And the entire city is in complete disorder.
Yesterday, Kevin had a meeting across town on Madison Ave. He had to get up extra early, put on his buisness suit and tennis shoes, throw his laptop and his dress shoes into a backpack, bundle up (it was 20 degrees outside, with a wind chill of 11), and hike about 3 miles to his meeting. Completely nuts.
They have all of these rules in place for transportation...no cars into the city across the bridges or tunnels between 5am and 11am with less then 4 people. No cars below 96th street with less then 4 people during those hours (for non-New Yorkers, EVERYTHING is below 96th street). Cabs can pick-up up to 4 separate people, and instead of running the meter, they have separated the city into zones, and it's a $10 flat rate per person in one zone, and an another $5 for each additional zone you enter.
I can't even put into words how extraordinarily frustrating and inconvenient the whole thing is. I made the mistake of riding in a car with a friend today to get across town. It took us an hour and a half to get from the Upper West Side across Central Park to the Upper East Side. Needless to say, we are all ready for the stupid strike to end, and these people to start driving their buses and subways again.
There is no other city in the country that would be paralyzed like NYC is by a transit strike. I can't even think of anything to compare it to. In any other city, It would be like all the cars went on strike and no one could drive. So the week before Christmas all the cars are picketing for ridiculous reasons like the MTA isn't providing competitive enough re-sale values for cars that haven't even been produced yet. Now everyone has to ride their bikes or skateboards to work...oh, and it's 15 degrees outside. Lovely, huh?
Say a prayer for us, and everyone else who is trying to get out of the city in before the holidays.
