Get a Horse--or an Elephant

A transit strike tests the mettle of New Yorkers

New York, New York, a hell- uv-a town, The Bronx is up but the Battery's down, And people ride in a hole in the ground. -- Lyric from On the Town

But not last week. A transit strike had closed down New York's celebrated subway system and driven its lumbering buses off the streets. As a result, New Yorkers were walking, running or riding just about anything availablebicycles, helicopters, roller skates, unicycles, ferry boats, mopeds, minibuses. Some 200,000 people cycled around town one day, and 6,600 hoofed it across the Brooklyn Bridge. The New York Road Runners Club stationed members along the way to dispense water to the weary during the rush hour.

Manhattan was alive with eye-stopping incongruities: a man in a blue pinstripe suit and ten-gallon hat roller skating on the Avenue of the Americas; a distinguished, elderly man tooling along 57th Street in a motorized chair, his briefcase tucked under the seat; a woman decked out in designer dress and gold jewelry plodding down Fifth Avenue in sneakers. Mayor Edward Koch paid rush-hour visits to the Brooklyn Bridge, whooping like a cheerleader and shouting encouragement to the passing throngs.

New Yorkers, one of the most adaptable breeds of urban animals, were trying their best to adjust to living without a system that they often have trouble living with. Some 5.1 million passengers a day ride the city's subways and buses, making the transportation network the nation's busiest, second in the world only to Moscow. The Big Apple's transit problems are as enormous as its workload: broken-down and obsolete equipment; rolling stock disfigured by grime and graffiti; rush-hour rib crunching; well-publicized crime ranging from muggings to people being pushed in front of onrushing trains; and to top it off, a projected $200 million deficit for the coming fiscal year. Faced with these losses, and trying to preserve a 500 fare, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority turned down the two striking unions' demands for a 15% raise in the first year of the new contract and a 10% raise in the second. Instead, the M.T.A. proposed a 6% hike in each year. John Lawe, a leader of the Transport Workers Union, whose members make an average of $16,000 a year, called the offer "totally inadequate." The strike was on. Koch proposed a civil suit against the unions for the city's financial losses. Said he: "We will never give in to unreasonable demands."

Only once before had New York been hit by a mass transit strikea twelve-day disaster in January 1966 that caught the city off guard. People turned to private cars and jammed the streets of Manhattan. This time the city was prepared with routes and rules to keep down the number of cars. Police were stationed at entry points to make sure that every car carried at least three people. One man from New Jersey who tried to get into town with two inflated dummies in his car was turned back. But there were few cheaters. Most motorists with empty seats picked up hitchhikers, a newly respectable means of travel adopted by matrons and executives alike.

Still, despite the precautions, traffic soared as high as 30% above normal figures during rush hours, and accidents rose 20%. Many involved scrapes between motorists and bicyclists, old antagonists on New York streets, but most of the injuries were not serious. Others were not so lucky. One 70-year-old man walked ten miles to work, then had a heart attack on the way home and later died.

The strike did have some compensations: the serious-crime rate fell 23%, probably because fully 10,000 of New York's 24,000 policemen were walking beats during peak hours50% more than usual. Then too, a police sergeant observed, "the muggers can't get to work."

As the strike took hold, New York City began losing about $100 million a day in wages, sales and productivity. Retail business was down about 30%. Taxes geared to business activity dropped about $2 million a day, while the city's costs of coping with the strike rose about another $1 million daily ($880,000 in overtime pay alone for the police).

Absenteeism, generally about 7%, climbed to 19% for city workers and 14% for private employees. The private sector was hit less hard because many of the city's corporations had been devising emergency plans for weeks. The Equitable Life Assurance Society reserved 1,600 hotel rooms, paid out $15 a person for breakfast and dinner, and figured the total bill at $125,000 a day. Smaller companies offered to pay workers living in Manhattan if they would put up coworkers in their apartments. The fiber division of Celanese distributed some 200 dark blue sweatshirts with bold orange letters proclaiming I'M GETTING TO WORK.

Exxon hired 14 yellow school buses to pick up 600 employees affected by the strike. To encourage joggers, the company opened its executive showers to employees who ran to work. Throughout Manhattan, companies set up bike parks watched over by guards.

Down on Wall Street, the Federal Reserve and New York Clearing House Association, which speeds payments between twelve major banks, had the most elaborate system of all: 400 buses and five excursion boats to shuttle some 35,000 employees to work. The ferries normally carry vacationers between Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. In all, some 30 boats were handling up to 20,000 passengers a dayincluding a couple who were treated for seasickness at Beekman-Downtown Hospital. Watching the little armada buzzing around the waterfront, Thomas Ashwell, an advertising executive, remarked, "It looks like Dunkirk."

Along Broadway, the shows that had been doing badly were doing worse, but hits like Annie were faring fine. After the Tuesday performance of Annie, the producer offered to let anyone stay overnight in the theater. Two of the eight takers: Sandy, the star dog, and his owner.

In midtown, Herman's sporting-goods store had a run on running shoes, roller skates and small backpacks big enough to hold an attache case. Bicycle stores sold out. At 96th Street and Broadway, a queue at one bike shop stretched along the block, a variation on last summer's gas line. People were waiting as long as 45 minutes to put air in their tires.

Inevitably, some New Yorkers' solutions to the problem of getting about were spectacularly original. One Brooklyn man telephoned Gloria McGill, owner of Chateau Stables, to request an elephant fitted with a platform and chair to take him from his home to his job on Staten Island. McGill said she would need 30 days to obtain a suitable beast (at $1,200 a day); the customer settled for a horse and carriage to pick him up at 5 a.m.

Skates and bicycles did not appeal to Grant McLeod in The Bronx, so he drove his car seven miles north to Yonkers, then took a Conrail train 14 miles south to Grand Central. "It actually took me less time than the subway," says McLeod. "Of course, it costs three times as much."

There was the rub. It was fine for people who owned cars to car pool or drive north to suburban train stations. It was merely inconvenient for those insulated by corporate life to get up at 6 a.m. and fall into the provided cab. It was actually a lark for the physical-fitness buffs, who could test their independence. But for many of the poor and infirm, the transit strike was a disaster.

The garment district, which employs many minorities, was reporting a 26% to 40% absentee rate. Most of the workers are paid an hourly wage or piece rate: no work, no money. MacLevy, owner of a leather-coat manufacturing business in Manhattan, reported that fewer than a third of his workers were able to get to their jobs. Said he: "They live in places too far away for a bicycleplaces like the South Bronx and Brooklyn."

The elderly too were endangered. They were often dependent upon the city's social and health workers, who traveled by bus or subway to visit them. In some cases, hospitals had to admit old people as patients. Doctors were fearful especially about diabetics who normally were given injections of insulin in their homes. Last week these people had to walk to hospitals for treatment.

"New Yorkers are best in adversity," Mayor Koch kept saying as he cheered on walkers and joggers and cyclists. Often enough, they are (as in the 1965 blackout, though not the one in 1977). But at week's end their patience was beginning to wear a bit thin. The Bronx, it turned out, was indeed a long way up, and the Battery a long way down, and the people who work and live in the nation's biggest and busiest city were eageras they never thought they would beto get back into their hole in the ground.

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