NYC Transit Strike Day 1...The Commute...

"It's pandemonium outside, I feel like I'm in the mosh pit of a Metallica concert."
-New York Commuter-

"I think they all should get fired."
-Angry New Yorker-

[MAKING IT IN]
I woke up today to the very unsurprising news of a transit strike. So instead of my usual 70-90 minute commute via bus and subway, I was subjected to the Long Island Rail Road today as my means to getting to work. I must say it was a very painless experience. As soon as I got to the station(after my dad drove me there) a train pulled right in and then there was a train ready to go to Penn Station from Jamaica as soon as I got there. Apparently I had also avoided the majority of the morning rush and there were no lines at all for me this morning. Can't say the same for some people who were stuck in line for up to 4 hours outside the Jamaica station.
From Penn Station it was fairly easy to catch a cab downtown. It wasn't as crowded as I thought it would be. Traffic moved smoothly. It was fairly quiet and rather nice with no trucks or buses on the road. I wish the city could be more like that every day honestly. Unforutunately, one cabbie did try to rip me off and tried to charge me 20 bucks to go downtown 20 streets...HECK NO!
Anyways I ended up spending the same commute time, if not slightly less. =)

[TRAVELLING DURING THE DAY]
So I have the distinct pleasure of running some errands for my company during the day that involves me running around the city. Gave me a nice view of how things progressively got worse during the day.
Went up to midtown mid afternoon. Traffic was running quite well. It felt like any other day. Except my cabbie hit a parked car on the way up. I think that scared the two Texan tourists I was riding with.
Later on towards the early evening I had the awful pleasure of running down to police headquarters, which is right by the Brooklyn Bridge. Now that was getting bad. Traffic was bumper to bumper all around the area. In fact traffic was moving so slow, that after I left police headquarters half an hour later, I caught a cab back up to Union Sq. When I got into the cab...it felt very familiar...I ended up in the same cab that dropped me off half an hour earlier! Apparently in half an hour he was able to barely move anywhere. And traffic moving through the downtown area just seemed to get worse!

[THE NIGHTMARE GETTING HOME]
So the real hard part was getting home. Having been in cabs for a significant portion of the day, and all of them tuned into 1010WINS listening to the news, all I was hearing was there was absolute pandemonium outside Penn Station for everyone trying to grab a trip home on the LIRR. I was NOT looking forward to that.
Now I left the office at 6:20...And caught a cab at 14th St. around 6:30...Now cabs are picking up more than one customer at a time today. So the cabbie is gonna take a few people up to the 59th St.bridge so they can cross over to Queens on foot. He tells me he's gonna drop them off first and then swing back down and drop me off. Really not a great idea. But I was too tired to realize that so I just agree. It didn't dawn on me how much it didnt make sense until we started hitting midtown around 34th St. and 1st Ave. Traffic was absolutely INSANE. Nothing was moving as everyone was headed up to the bridge. It took us an hour to move from 34th St. to 59th St.
INSANE!!!
Once we got past the bridge traffic was moving incredibly fast. I finally got to Penn Station in time for an 8:30 train outta the city. And luckily the chaos outside Penn Station had dissipated by 7. And instead of waiting in the cold for who knows how long along 7th Ave., had I gotten there earlier, at least I was in the comfort and warmth of a seat in a cab. Anyways all in all I got back to my stop in Queens at 9:20. Essentially it took me 3 hours to get home. Ridiculous.

[THE DAMAGE]
So all in all today, I spent 4 hours going to and from work, about 2 hours in cabs running errands, and spent a total of 70 bucks getting around the city today.(Thank goodness I get reimbursed!)

[CODA]
Interesting thing I also noticed about opinions on the strike since I got to talk to a whole bunch of people on the trains and cabs.
Most professionals take my opinion and are quite angry at the transit workers and the union and feel this strike is ridiculous and beyond an inconveience for us. They feel this strike is completely unjustified and that the union is asking for too much.
People who don't work in more professional and corporate environments tend to be in support of the transit workers and feel that the government should give into their demands, particularly seeing the effect it had today. They particularly blamed both Bloomberg and Pataki, the city and state's Republican leadership for being completely ineffective and allowing this to happen and being out of touch with the affected New Yorkers and the transit workers.

--Just thought that was a very interesting dichotomy in terms of thinking and social lines.--