Looming LIRR strike has Long Island riders making contingency commuting plans

Tysha Frederick, of Selden, might need to drive into New York City — and struggle to pay for parking. Chris Del Greco, of Rockville Centre, would leave home extra early to cram onto a crowded shuttle bus. Chris Spiridis, of Syosset, might carpool with co-workers. David Glatter would need to drive from Philadelphia to accompany his 96-year-old mother to a medical procedure on Long Island. Jin Hur, of Auburndale, Queens, would grudgingly ride a bus and a subway. Walter Mack, of Valley Stream, would consider retiring.

These Long Island Rail Road passengers’ contingency plans are among countless ones being made in the final days before what would be the LIRR’s first labor strike since June 17, 1994. That one lasted two days.

Decades later, little progress is being made again in the run-up to a strike.

Talks are scheduled to resume Wednesday between the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the LIRR, and five unions representing nearly 3,500 workers. A sticking point is the final year of a four-year contract.

The would-be strikers — electricians, locomotive engineers, signal inspectors, machinists and ticket clerks — want raises of 5% in the fourth year of a deal. The MTA has offered 3%, and said it would go as high as 4.5% if raises were offset by productivity increases and work-rule concessions.

The strike, scheduled to start at 12:01 a.m. Saturday if talks fail, would almost immediately hit Frederick, 43, a cook at Manhattan’s Veterans Affairs hospital who also works weekends, she said Tuesday while waiting for the 4:01 p.m. train to Ronokonoma from Penn Station.

Frederick is among the 80% of Long Islanders who ride mass transit into the city for work.

"It would be very costly. The strike would cost me a lot," said Frederick, musing aloud over whether she’d drive into the city or find her way to the Jamaica transit hub somehow and take the subway.

Some portion of the 270,000 weekday riders are expected to use their automobiles, straining roadways.

To ease the strain, the MTA hopes some LIRR riders would work from home, but that’s not an option for some jobs, like hospital cook.

For those who can’t, or won’t, stay home, there will be shuttle buses available from six LIRR stations — Bay Shore, Hicksville, Huntington, Mineola, Ronkonkoma and near Lakeview — to the Jamaica-179th Street or Howard Beach-Kennedy Airport subway stations.

Del Greco, 32, an elevator mechanic, would be unable to ride his Wantagh branch in the event of a strike and would have to leave earlier, "but you have to also take into consideration that other people are gonna be probably leaving earlier too — and it’s just gonna be crazy."

"A lot of people will be getting onto a shuttle to Jamaica at the same time as me, so I feel like I’d have to wait awhile to be able to even get on one. And it’ll just delay my commute."

Glatter, who is in his 70s and now lives in the Philadelphia suburbs, has to be back on Long Island in the coming days to accompany his mother for a back procedure. He had plans to get to the Island via railroad but in the event of a strike, he said, he'll drive.

"My mom’s 96 years old, and if she needs me to come up, you know, that’s what I’ll have to do," said Glatter, who just retired from his job as a healthcare administrator. "I don’t have a choice."

For Spiridis, who works in insurance, he and his co-workers would take turns driving, potentially to Hunts Point, to ride the No. 7 subway train into Manhattan.

"A bunch of us at work are talking about potentially carpooling," Spiridis, 46, said.

But countless fellow commuters would also be doing the same.

"It’s not gonna be pleasant," he said. "But in a pinch, if that’s what we need to do, that’s probably the only option. Uber, driving into the city is just miserable."

Hur, 49, who works in a restaurant, is dreading having to "transfer many times," a more convoluted route involving the bus and train, instead of just a single-seat ride on the Port Washington branch from Queens.

He hopes any strike, if it happens, is short.

"I don’t know how many days," he said.

As for what Mack, 64, a retired cop who now works security in Manhattan, might do in the event of the strike, he said: "At my age, I might just stay home."

For good.

He doesn’t want to schlep onto the transit system like he used to when he was a younger man.

"I’m thinking of actually going into retirement," he said, adding: "I have options."