Manic Monday: NJ Transit strike is over — but commuters still feeling the pain: ‘Pandemonium!'
NJ Transit riders are breathing a sigh of relief as the rail system reached a tentative agreement to bring a short-lived engineers' strike to an end, but they're coping with one more miserable day until trains are back in service.
Long lines snaked throughout the third floor of the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan Monday afternoon, well ahead of the usual rush-hour crush, as commuters scrambled to catch shuttles to park-and-ride lots on the other side of the Hudson.
'I told my boss on Friday that I'll be leaving early as long as this thing went on. Look at this line! It's not even 2:30 in the afternoon yet, and there's a hundred people on this line,' Bob P., 26, who was waiting to catch a shuttle bus to the Old Bridge park-and-ride, told The Post.
'Do you have any idea what this is going to look like at 5 or 6 at night? Pandemonium!'
Youth worker Terry Jones, 47, got into a shouting match with a transit worker during the evening rush hour after he thought the staffer was too aggressive corralling commuters.
'I just want you to put me on my bus,' Jones yelled at the worker before getting on an escalator. 'Stop talking to me. Leave! Like get a supervisor, Jesus Christ.'
Jones' trip into the city from Carteret would usually take 45 minutes, but it was double that time Monday morning and made him late for work.
'If it's a one out of 10 —10. Pissed off. Ten, yeah, a 10. I'm pissed off,' he seethed. 'This is ridiculous … That makes me feel horrible, especially in stuff with these trying times and stuff with jobs that are laying people off.'
When Ankit Kumar, 21, arrived at the Port Authority Monday evening, he quickly reversed course and went back to his office for two more hours until the throngs of commuters shrank.
'It's extremely annoying because you're supposed to get home after 6 [p.m.], I get home around 7 [p.m.], but it's going to be 9 or 10 [p.m.] and I have to get up at 6 [a.m.] again tomorrow,' the paralegal said. 'I'm obviously annoyed and irritated.'
Kumar, who typically has a three-hour commute, said he was already considering moving to the Big Apple – but now the short-lived strike has made that a stronger possibility.
Technician Ansel Walters, 49, stood in a long line after he initially thought his days on a shuttle bus were over when he heard a deal was reached. His typical commute is a mere 35 minutes, but now it's two-and-a-half hours.
'Actually, while I was on the buses, a few people got frustrated and got off because it was just taking too long,' Walters said.
Property manager Sharon Adamo, 64, was ready to return to a more comfortable ride the rest of the week.
'People standing on the bus, I think it's outrageous, it's uncomfortable, it is dangerous,' said Adamo, whose round-trip commute to and from Rahway has been extended by about an hour.
The Garden State-owned public transit provider made a deal to bump pay for engineers, who have not had a raise since 2019. The agreement was reached after two days of tense negotiations, culminating with a work stoppage that saw 450 Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen union members walk off the job Friday after midnight.
The work stoppage — the first for the rail system since 1983 — led to a stressful commute for tens of thousands of New Jersey residents.
'I am delighted to report that NJ Transit and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) have reached a tentative agreement and as a result, New Jersey's first rail strike in decades has officially come to an end,' Gov. Phil Murphy said at a press conference Sunday night.
Union leadership initially said the commuting nightmare was over and its workers 'will return to work and trains will begin running on their regular schedules Monday,' according to Politico, but NJ Transit, Murphy and a union rep later amended the scheduling, saying trains won't start running until 12:01 a.m. Tuesday.
The transit agency released a schedule of the first trains expected to run predawn Tuesday with the earliest trains set to run around 4 a.m.
'Friday sucked! The first bus at 5:05 a.m. didn't even show up in the morning, and then this morning this bus was late,' Tom Krebs, 61, a Manhattan doorman who lives in Riverside said.
'I mean, on the bright side, they opened up the bus lane early this morning, like around 5:30 a.m., so we got here with no problem. But man, I am glad they settled it! I've been a doorman for 42 years, and this is not what I needed just before retirement.'
Jeanne Lotte, 31, an executive assistant jumping on a bus to Secaucus, was also thrilled to see the strike reach its conclusion.
'I'm sneaking out of work early so don't tell my boss. It was a nightmare getting into that parking lot this morning. Thank God this is not going to go on for days and days,' she said.
'This morning was pretty frantic. The looks on people's faces was enough to scare the hell out of you.'
Additional reporting by David Propper.
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