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Cabs With Strangers, and Other Ways to Work



Commuters biked, roller-skated and walked across the Brooklyn Bridge today.


By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS and COLIN MOYNIHAN
Published: December 20, 2005

New York City's subways and buses were replaced by rusty bicycles, old walking shoes, ferries and $20 cab rides today, as millions of New Yorkers who usually take public transportation were left to make it to work any way they could.

The strike by 33,000 transit workers left some 6.9 million people, from school children to physicians, without their usual way to get around in 21-degree temperatures made chillier by a sharp wind. Some employers sent out chartered buses and vans to fetch their workers, other people started walking but turned back when they tired, and some didn't bother leaving the house at all.

But many decided to drive. Some found fairly clear roads leading into tunnels, though others confronted traffic snarls as early as 5 a.m., as police officers turned away cars that had fewer than the four passengers required to enter Manhattan south of 96th Street during the morning rush.

So in a city where it is deemed polite to avoid eye contact with passengers sitting inches away on a crowded subway, New Yorkers were compelled to hop into cars with perfect strangers in order to comply with the four-passenger rule.

"I was waiting and no bus came," said Larissa Silver, 38, who lives in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, and works on Wall Street in Lower Manhattan. "Then a lady pulled up in a car and said, 'Does anybody need a ride downtown?' "

Ms. Silver, who left her house at 5:30 a.m. to get there by 9 a.m., added: "So far, I've been lucky, but this is just the beginning. I don't know how I'll get home. I have no idea."

Christopher Williams, a 44-year-old maintenance worker, was waiting on the corner of 125th Street and Malcolm X Boulevard in Harlem, wondering how to get to his job at 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue. He said he had risen at 4 a.m. instead of 6 a.m. because he anticipated problems.

"The man who gets paid by the day is going to suffer," he said. "You don't show up, you don't get paid."

Dumbia Adam, 36, who had become frustrated while waiting for a company van at 125th Street and Broadway in the predawn hours said a day at work downtown was not worth the hassle of a wearisome morning commute.

"I'll wait until 6:30 a.m., then I'm going home," he said. "I'm not paying $20 for a taxi."

Along major thoroughfares throughout the city, police officers set up check points and blocked streets, reserving lanes for carpoolers and taxi cabs - which during the strike will be allowed to pick up multiple fares, something that is usually prohibited. Madison and Fifth Avenues, which usually hum with traffic, were closed to all but emergency vehicles and buses during the morning rush. Some drivers were forced to wait in their cars for more than an hour until enough passengers could be persuaded to join them.

"You need a ride?" shouted out a man with two passengers driving a silver Mercedes SUV after he stopped on the corner of 125th Street and Broadway. A woman said that she did. The driver turned away and asked a few others where each was trying to go. He turned back to the woman, "Come on, mama, I'll give you a ride," he said.

By midmorning, one of the police checkpoints at 96th Street and Broadway had backed up to 125th Street.

Anne Reilly, a 31-year-old clothing designer, who was trying to get to midtown Manhattan, said the prospect of getting into a car with people she did not know had made her pause.

"I think there are enough police around if anything happens," she said. "The city needs to come together on things like this. I normally wouldn't get in a car with strangers."

Even some cabdrivers, eager to profit under the strike rules allowing them to pick up multiple fares, were grumbling.

"This is going to be bad for everyone," said John Mousadakas, who has been driving a taxi for 28 years. At 9:15 a.m., Mr. Mousadakas, 62, said he had seen "hardly any" groups of people hailing cabs. "A lot of people are staying at home," he said.

Many others walked to work, including Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who spent the night on a cot at the city's emergency operations center in Brooklyn. Accompanied by a retinue of police officers and reporters, he made the 35-minute walk across the Brooklyn Bridge to City Hall at about 7:20 a.m. among a throng of thousands of other walkers, skaters and bicyclists, most heavily bundled. The mayor wore a black leather jacket with the collar turned up and a pair of faded jeans. As they approached him from behind, bicyclists had to dismount and walk.

After she'd finished crossing the 6,000-foot long bridge, one pedestrian announced, "I need a foot massage."

After he successfully made it over on his bike, James Fowler, a 40-year old physical therapist from Prospect Heights had second thoughts as well. He still had a few miles to go to his office in Union Square.

"It's cold," he said. "I'm not quite prepared. I don't normally do this."

If the strike continues for several days, Mr. Fowler said he would be forced to consider options other than the bike he had not been on since midsummer.

But "for now," he said, "it's the bicycle."

By late morning, the bridge was still full of people streaming across into Manhattan.

Former Mayor Edward I. Koch, who walked across the Brooklyn Bridge during the strike of 1980, said in an interview on WNYC-FM radio that he received a 6:30 a.m. phone call from the livery cab that picks him up most mornings at 7:30 a.m. telling him to be prepared to be picked up early.

"Instead of being called at 7:30, when I normally leave," he said, "I got called at about a quarter of 7 and I go downstairs and two young women who were going to work say they're going on Sixth Avenue. And I said, 'Come with me.' And I took them up and took them to their place of work and I got to my place of work. So it was easy for me this morning."

Janon Fisher, Vikas Bajaj, Maria Aspan and Ann Farmer contributed reporting for this article.


Copyright 2005The New York Times Company