(Bloomberg) — New Jersey Transit is asking riders to work from home in the event of a potential union strike that threatens to shut down commuter rail service starting as early as May 16.
The agency requested riders travel on the system for “essential purposes only,” according to an alert posted on its website. NJ Transit unveiled a contingency plan should a strike impact the trains that shuttle roughly 100,000 people every day.
Kris Kolluri, the chief executive officer, said that current bus lines will be enhanced, prioritizing routes that go to New York City given the concentration of riders commuting into Manhattan.
“We will focus on moving essential workers who need to get to their work,” he said at a press conference on Wednesday. “For those folks who can afford to work from home, should the strike become a reality, we ask them to work from home.”
Union members represented by the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen voted earlier this month to reject a labor agreement. That sets the stage for engineers to go on strike from their daily job operations as soon as next month.
Engineers are responsible for operating the trains and driving them between each station. A coordinated effort by the rail worker’s union to call in sick in 2022 forced the system to halt all train service for the day. The demonstration also impacted some lines on the Metro-North.
Accepting the union demands would cost taxpayers and the system roughly $1.4 billion between July and June 2030, according to estimates from NJ Transit. The agency would either have to increase fares by 17% starting this summer, hike the corporate transit fee by 27%, or make service reductions, officials have said.
NJ Transit is one of the nation’s largest public-transportation systems. It operates more than 925,000 weekday trips across its rail, bus and lightrail platforms.
(Updates story with details on the contingency plan in the first two paragraphs.)
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