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The Long Island Rail Road strike is coming to an end after the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and unions reached a tentative agreement Monday, three days after it started.
“Tonight, the MTA reached a fair deal with the five LIRR unions that delivers raises for workers while protecting riders and taxpayers. I’m pleased to announce that phased LIRR service will resume beginning tomorrow at noon,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a post on X.
The deal between five LIRR labor unions and the MTA was announced just before 9 p.m. after negotiations all day and over the weekend, bringing service back to the largest commuter rail in the U.S.
The LIRR, which serves roughly 300,000 commuters daily, has been paralyzed since midnight Saturday, when the 3,500 unionized workers walked off the job.
LIRR service to resume Tuesday
MTA CEO Janno Lieber said the strike officially ends at midnight Tuesday, but train service will not be available for the morning commute.
“The strike is going to be over and there are people who are reporting to work in this hour and in the hours to come to resume service,” Lieber said at a news conference outside MTA headquarters in Lower Manhattan.
LIRR President Robert Free said service will resume Tuesday at noon, with hourly service on the Port Washington, Huntington, Ronkonkoma and Babylon branches, followed by full peak service for the afternoon and evening rush hour.
“Once the rush hour begins, about 4 p.m., we’ll have service on all branches … normal weekday schedule,” said Free, who noted shuttle buses will be available in the morning.
The MTA said it needs time to conduct mandatory inspections and call employees back to work before regular service restarts.
More details are available on the MTA’s website here.
No tax or fair hikes, Hochul says
Full details of the agreement were not immediately provided, but Hochul said at the MTA news conference that it does not raise taxes or fares.
“At a time when everything is going up, we all know the story, I was not going to allow taxes or fares to go up,” the governor said.
The National Mediation Board summoned union leaders and MTA management to a meeting to resume bargaining Sunday evening and both sides picked up the talks Monday.
“Due to the nature of the negotiations, we cannot discuss the specifics,” Kevin Sexton, national vice president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, said at a separate news conference. “What we can say is that we are looking forward to our members getting back to work and doing what they do best, which is serving the region.”
“The whole point was that we needed to find ways that we could give people fair raises, but also structure it in a way that didn’t blow the MTA budget. We got it done,” Lieber said.
The deal must still be ratified by the five labor unions. The conductors and maintenance workers had been working without a contract for two and a half years.
This was the first LIRR strike since June 1994, when conductors and maintenance workers walked off after two and a half years without a contract. Then-Gov. Mario Cuomo and his administration had to step in and impose a contract settlement.
Commuters take shuttle buses
The MTA’s strike contingency plan, with replacement shuttle buses, will remain in use Tuesday morning to bring commuters to the New York City subway. Buses will run from 4:30 a.m. – 9 a.m.
More than 2,100 commuters who couldn’t drive Monday morning went to one of the six Long Island pickup locations and boarded buses to stations in Queens, according to the MTA, which had capacity for 13,000.
In the afternoon, MTA workers guided commuters off the subway and toward their buses to get home.
Travel times were up, and so were some riders’ frustrations at the Howard Beach-JFK station.
“Hell, it cost me $100 in the Uber to get to Queens and now I got to ride a two-hour bus,” said Kevin Pierre-Louis, of Bayshore. “I know everybody wants money and they want to get the pay they deserve, but it’s inconveniencing a lot of people.”
Pierre-Louis said he’ll work from home Tuesday to avoid the hassle, but others won’t have that option.
“Two hours to go to Manhattan,” said Marcia Russell, of Hempstead, who works at Harlem Hospital. “I have to go to work.”
“I left at 7:30 and I punched in at 11:23,” said Josephine Pantell, of Seaford. “It’s just so frustrating.”
Jamaica-179th Street was also a shuttle location.
Staffy Chavis, of St. Albans, waited at Jamaica-179th Street to board a shuttle bus to get to Fire Island for her 8 p.m. work shift.
“It’s chaotic, but this looks organized,” Chavis said. “Just a really big inconvenience.”
