New York commuters' long walk

NEW YORK - If you were seeking a miracle on 34th Street in Manhattan yesterday you could have strolled down the middle lane of Fifth Avenue where all but emergency vehicles were banned or wandered into Macy's on Herald Square where the cosmetics floor was delightfully empty.

There were some pleasures on Day 2 of the transit strike in New York, especially if you like crisp winter air and walking - walking a great deal.

It was a good day for meeting strangers too, if you don't mind that they are crammed with you in the back of a taxi cab.

But no one need tell you that the strike that has shut down America's largest transport system since Tuesday is not good for everyone, especially in the final days before Christmas when cash registers should be humming.

The city is losing US$400 million in revenue every day of the strike, with retail and the hospitality industry taking the brunt.

"The timing is the worst," said Jose Gout, manager at Bice, an up-scale Italian restaurant on 54th Street that normally counts this week as the busiest of the year.

Dinner on Tuesday night was 40 per cent down, he reported yesterday.

Worse, half his staff were either late or did not show up at all - and he only made it in from Queens by bicycle.

"I tried a cab but it moved two blocks in ten minutes and I couldn't afford to be late. The ride home at one in the morning was miserable."

The only saving grace was a Red Cross van parked at the 59th Street where they gave him water and a cereal bar.

"If this goes on much longer, I will be on suicide watch," said Mitchell Modell of Modell's Sporting Goods, with branches up and down Manhattan.

"If it goes a full week, sales could be off by 50 per cent," predicted Burt Flickinger, a retail industry consultant in New York who sees losses in the city possibly reaching half a billion dollars. The economic impact could be pretty egregious."

Experts said it could ripple across the US economy unless the strike ends soon.

But last night there was scant sign of a truce between the Metropolitan Transport Authority and its 30,000 workers represented by the Transport Workers Union with no face-to-face negotiations scheduled.

However a US$1 million-a-day fine imposed on the union by a judge on Tuesday put it under pressure to end the stoppage.

"It's terrible, " lamented Crystine Nicholas, president of New York and Co, which promotes the city's tourist industry.

"We are seeing cancellations, major cancellations. They're not shopping as much as they'd like to because they don't want to carry the packages back to their hotels if they can't take a bus or a subway."

But for many in Gotham yesterday it was a case once again of making the best of a messy situation.

Tourists who were already in the city like Lorraine Hall visiting from South Carolina seemed mostly unphased by the strike.

"I didn't come up here to sit in a hotel room, and as long as my two feet are letting me push it, I'm going to push it."

At Rockefeller Plaza with its towering Christmas tree, Elaine Kovacs, was almost gleeful about the empty streets.

In short order, she her husband and two young daughters skated on the ice rink, had breakfast with Santa Claus and used a bicycle buggy to get uptown to the FAO Schwartz toy emporium. "We didn't find it bad at all," she said.

At the W Hotel on Union Square, a shivering doorman said the most questions came from guests afraid of missing their planes.

He was advising most to try to hail a cab to Grand Central - or walk the 25 blocks - to catch express airport buses.

Inside the lobby, an insurance agent from Atlanta, Jan Noll, 55, was happy she booked a limousine days ago to take her to La Guardia. But it was already late.

"I will get home, when I get home." As for the meeting she had flown here for - it had been cancelled.

One man who had no intention of missing work three days before Christmas was Willy Merna, 55.

A dog collar just visible beneath his winter jacket, he is the principle chaplain at the Beth Israel Hospital near the East River.

"The patients are there and they need care." But his journey was "better than usual," he said.

Like many other employers in the city, Beth Israel has deployed a fleet of cars to help shuttle vital staff to work.

- INDEPENDENT