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Hundreds of thousands of commuters can breathe a sigh of relief today as a threatened strike by Amtrak workers has been avoided. A strike would have shut down Penn Station, diverting travelers on the Long Island Rail Road, Amtrak lines, and New Jersey Transit to subways and the PATH system. The city was already preparing contingency plans to have LIRR riders disembark in Brooklyn, and Jamaica Station and Woodside in Queens to take the subway. NJ Transit riders would be shunted to Hoboken, where they could board PATH trains to Manhattan. The chairman of a LIRR commuters group said "It is going to be worse than a nightmare - it will be a complete horror show."
Amtrak conceded to the demands of nine unions, however, which have been working without a contract since 1999. The unions were demanding a one-third increase in pay and back wages for nearly the last ten years. Final details have not been released and probably won't be until the new contract is ratified by union members, but it's being reported that back wages averaging almost $13,000 per employee are part of the agreement.
Going your way, by Triborough at flickr
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AMTRAK is a waste of money. It may help folks in Connecticut get to jobs in NYC, but anywhere else...it doesn't run at conveniant times, or, it doesn't go where anyone would want to go.
Here, in Ft Wayne, a relatively large city (for Indiana), there is a good sized airport, but no AMTRAK station. To get on AMTRAK, you have to drive half an hour or so north, to Waterloo, and park alongside the track. I'm not parking alongside a track-what if soemthing gets kicked up by the train? I don't want my car dinged up by debris! And, there's no security. What if I want to go to Chicago for a weekend? I'm not leaving my car there all weekend! TO go to Buffalo, where I'm from, I'd have to get there by 1 am, and a travel agent warned me, AMTRAK is not reliable-the train may not get there for another half hour. To get a car and driver from Fort WAyne to take me there and pick me up, would cost at least $180-is that guy going to wait, for the train to get to Waterloo? And forget the car train, going south. It leaves from just outside DC! If you're a snowbird from the midwest or NE, wanting to save some miles on your car, why bother taking the cartrain, when you have to drive half way to Florida or more, just to get on the train! Why doesn't this train leave from Boston, NYC, Buffalo, CHicago, Detroit?
LEt me at AMTRAK. I'll put on the board, anyone who's ever lived in Europe, and has seen how mass train-sit can work!
People who live in CT and commute to NYC take the Metro North Railroad.