LIRR riders brace for chaos, mull options as strike deadline approaches

Jobs in New York City. Final exams. Trips to see loved ones.

Those who depend on the Long Island Rail Road are mulling over how they will fulfill or forgo these and other obligations if trains grind to a halt early Saturday morning when the agency’s workers go on strike for the first time in more than three decades.

Many can work from home, others will bear a lengthy commute behind the wheel. Some will forfeit heading to work — and a payday — all together.

City high school math teacher Bailey Walker, of East Northport, hopes strike threats are all talk, and a deal will be reached before midnight Friday into Saturday.

But if there's no agreement, “It will be disastrous,” Walker said. “I'm on Long Island, so alternative for travel is buses, which there aren't enough buses for everyone. So it’ll just be mass chaos.

"People won't be able to get to work,” she added. “People who can't work from home won't be able to go in. It’ll be bad.”

Riders were hitting a different commuting snag Thursday after an electrical track fire near the East River tunnels suspended LIRR service out of Penn Station. The fire, which was extinguished, forced Alyssa Parker, 35, of Douglaston, to rush to Grand Central.

“Missed my train by 15 seconds,” Parker said. “You don't realize how big Grand Central Terminal is.” She said the 7 train from the West Side was packed.

“Everyone's in a bad mood,” Parker said.

If LIRR workers strike, “I’m working from home,” she said. “Thankfully my director is a Long Islander."

Parker said she prefers to work in the office with her colleagues after the years that COVID-19 forced people to work remotely.

“It's like PTSD from the pandemic,” Parker said.

For Stony Brook University students, the potential strike would coincide with finals week.

Brianna Tang, a graduate student at Stony Brook University, said she uses the LIRR to travel between school and her fiancé, who lives in Queens. But if there's a strike, she’ll just stay in Stony Brook for the exams.

Many commuters cannot hunker in place. Sitting in the Hicksville LIRR station with his earbuds on, Wilmy Murcy said he had not heard about the potential shutdown. When a reporter told him about it, he checked his phone to see how long it would take on the NICE Bus and the subway to get from Hicksville to Brooklyn Bridge Park, where he works in sanitation, on Monday.

“That's going to take forever,” he said, before hopping on a train to Jamaica.

Hitting the road could mean commuters will spend not only more time, but more money on daily travel. Dr. Lori Escallier, who works at Downstate Health Sciences University in Brooklyn, said she prefers the LIRR to get between Southampton, where she has a home, and the city. The train costs her around $10 from Ronkonkoma, compared  with the more than $100 cost of using an Uber and the Hampton Jitney. The LIRR is also faster due to avoiding Manhattan traffic, she said.

"We're praying the strike doesn't happen," she said.

The cost could be even greater for folks like Tom Faulding, who said he doesn't want to spend half of his workday behind the wheel if the trains stop running. During the last LIRR strike, Faulding, who works an IT job, spent 2½ hours behind the wheel to get from work to his Baldwin home.

“I'm an hourly worker, I have no vacation days,” Faulding, 55, said. “If I don't go into the city, I don't work … you don't work, you don't get paid.”

Raine Mackey, a three-decade veteran of commuting into the city for her job at an investment banking firm, said she does not agree with a pay increase for workers if it means ticket prices would also rise.

“I think we pay a fair amount of money,” Mackey, 69, of Westbury, said, “It’s, I think, very difficult for many people.”

Other riders, such as Miranda Dellipizzi, feel a raise for LIRR employees — and even the strike — is justified.

“I think that our whoever works the railroad, they work crazy hours and we do have to respect them,” said Dellipizzi, 28, of the Mastic-Shirley area, told Newsday during her train ride into work as an insurance underwriter in downtown Manhattan. “If they're asking for a little bit more money, I don't think that's terrible if this strike does happen.”