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So. Full. Of. RAGE!!!!!!
!#@(*%!)# MTA. %@#(*!#*#*#*!!!!!!!
It's cold. They made us get leave the PATH at 30th instead of 33rd, adding to my walk. It took 45 minutes for me to walk from 30th and B'way to 54th and Madison. It was cold.
And I'm well aware that I'm relatively lucky - I know people in much worse situations than I.
For those of you not in NYC - the subway and buses are on strike. They haven't had a pay raise in years and blah blah blah, but their demands are also totally unreasonable. Right now, I hate both the Transit Union and the MTA, both of whom are total asshats and should be kicked in the shins repeatedly until they settle. If this doesn't break by Christmas, there are going to be riots.
On the good side - it held off (it was supposed to start on Friday) until the worst of the cold snap broke (it's 33 today instead of 14 like this time last week), and it's sunny.
I feel bad for Bloomburg - there's totally nothing he can do (MTA is overseen by the state, apparently), and he's already gotten court orders against the union (which they ignored). The city's emergency plans seem to be working thus far - they shut down all of the major long streets (Madison, Park, etc) except for buses and emergency vehicles, they are only allowing high occupancy vehicles on others, there are police everywhere, there's a cap on taxi fares but they're allowed to take multiple fares at once, and PATH is running extra trains and extra routes (including a WTC-33rd train that doesn't ordinarily exist).
But even so - this is nuts. I know Philadelphia had a transit strike over the summer, but - that's not really the same thing at all. a) It was warm. b) Philadelphia is a significantly smaller city. and c) Philly's transit system kind of sucks. Which ordinarily is a bad thing. But in this case, means that they're a lot less dependent on public transportation than New York is. So it's less of a disaster.
Merry Christmas, New York.
It's cold. They made us get leave the PATH at 30th instead of 33rd, adding to my walk. It took 45 minutes for me to walk from 30th and B'way to 54th and Madison. It was cold.
And I'm well aware that I'm relatively lucky - I know people in much worse situations than I.
For those of you not in NYC - the subway and buses are on strike. They haven't had a pay raise in years and blah blah blah, but their demands are also totally unreasonable. Right now, I hate both the Transit Union and the MTA, both of whom are total asshats and should be kicked in the shins repeatedly until they settle. If this doesn't break by Christmas, there are going to be riots.
On the good side - it held off (it was supposed to start on Friday) until the worst of the cold snap broke (it's 33 today instead of 14 like this time last week), and it's sunny.
I feel bad for Bloomburg - there's totally nothing he can do (MTA is overseen by the state, apparently), and he's already gotten court orders against the union (which they ignored). The city's emergency plans seem to be working thus far - they shut down all of the major long streets (Madison, Park, etc) except for buses and emergency vehicles, they are only allowing high occupancy vehicles on others, there are police everywhere, there's a cap on taxi fares but they're allowed to take multiple fares at once, and PATH is running extra trains and extra routes (including a WTC-33rd train that doesn't ordinarily exist).
But even so - this is nuts. I know Philadelphia had a transit strike over the summer, but - that's not really the same thing at all. a) It was warm. b) Philadelphia is a significantly smaller city. and c) Philly's transit system kind of sucks. Which ordinarily is a bad thing. But in this case, means that they're a lot less dependent on public transportation than New York is. So it's less of a disaster.
Merry Christmas, New York.
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(Yes, MTA management takes some of that blame, too. They're morons and the system is poorly run and poorly financed. But this is anti-helping.)
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Does that include the rando train operators who couldn't come to work even if they wanted to (since one person can't run a train system)? I've actually been wondering, whether individual average-joe workers are the ones who get charged two days' pay for every work day missed, or whether it's the organization as a whole that pays it. Either way the whole situation sucks in a big way, as the financial cost of this mess has to get paid somehow.
should be kicked in the shins repeatedly until they settle
That would probably work. It really really hurts to get kicked in the shins. That's pretty much the whole thought I had there.
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I actually don't harbor real bad will to the poor guys who actually run the trains. They don't really get a say in anything, including whether they strike or not. It's the union leadership that should be beaten with sticks.