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Early Addition
Hey, the city's idea of "Alternative Transportation" is your feet! Or at least that's what their new, just-in-time-for-the possible-strike website, Altnerative Transportation Information Center, is telling us with their little header. Anyway, there are a bunch of links to maps, driving rules, the kinds of transportation that will not be affected (your bike is one of them!), and how shared taxi fares will be split. And folks, point out the "Options for Employers" to your bosses or office managers - option number 1 is "Allow workers to telecommute instead of traveling to the office" (employers do not include the Department of Education, which is still making teachers report to work, with only one hour extra to get there!).
Gothamist wonders if any companies will invoke force majeure, especially given that we hear some employers are asking their employees if they can use vacation days (!!) for a possible strike day. And we're also trying to love the transit strike fear.
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Will Bloomberg stop arresting cyclists now?
It would be an AMAZING help if the city created ferry service for the duration of the strike from the Staten Island Ferry terminal to midtown. It would certainly be far less of a hardship to walk from 1st or 12th Ave to midtown than from lower Manhattan. I wish someone had thought of it.
The $4 in the city Metro-North and LIRR fare is a good idea, however banning bikes is not, as it would make sense to ride between the train station and your orgin/destination.
MT -
extra ferry service would be great, but I don't think the city has extra boats lying around to call into action every 20 years or so.
Whatever happened to all those fast ferries? At one point there were two services going from St George into various points in Manhattan. Or maybe they could expand a route on NY Waterways.
I wonder if transit workers will be paid during a strike, even as the working poor (who generally lack both pension plans and health insurance) and the young (who are increasingly slotted to be freelancers without a retirement plan or health insurance) are not paid because they cannot get to work.
By "paid," I don't just mean cash pay. I mean non-cash pay, like health insurance for workers and retirees, and pensions. Will health insurance be cut off for two days for every day of the strike? If not, they are getting paid while the less well off are not.
It is the presence of these benefits that place transit workers amoung the minor rich in our society, but because it isn't cash pay they can see, they don't appreciate it. The fact that the minor rich and the major rich already have a secure retirement and health insurance, and aren't worried about the rest, is one reason we don't have a national health care finance system, and are running a huge budget deficit that is undermining social security, the only retirement half of all private-sector workers have.
Remember, two types of people are getting richer -- the retired, especially public employees, and top executives. Everyone else is gettting poorer. It is a matter of power, not a free marketplace with reciprocity. Remember that if transit workers continue to be paid while striking.
Larry, as a stupid socialist, you should be on the side of the union. Make up your mind where you stand and remember college is behind you and its time to grow up.
I'm on the side of the people without the deals, and have been out of college for 22 years. I was on the side of the people without the deals then, too.
Essentially, some people try to go through life contributing more than they receive, while others try to end life with a "profit" by imposing a "loss" on others. If being in the former category makes one stupid and a socialist, in your view, perhaps we simply do not share the same frame of reference. My advice -- you shouldn't have kids.
The head of the Union should be jailed for the chaos he's caused when the MTA contract offer was perfectly good.