A New York City Transit Bus drives down Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn on Tuesday night (EPA)
Governor Cuomo declared a transportation emergency for New York City on Wednesday night, ordering fares to be waived on all commuter rails, subways and buses through Friday night.
The announcement comes hours after limited commuter rail service returned to New York , with some subways are on track to be back Thursday morning, officials said.
Cuomo hopes that waiving fares will encourage commuters to utilize public transportation as Manhattan experienced paralyzing gridlock as the city recovered from the brutal super storm that was Hurricane Sandy.
Some Metro North and Long Island Railroad trains began rolling after 2 p.m. Subway service will resume tomorrow, although it remains unclear when the system will be running in full.
TRAIN LINES SET TO RETURN THURSDAY
There will be no subways between 34th Street in Midtown Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn, the MTA said. Many routes will be supplemented by bus service, according to the MTA.
Metro North will restore limited service on its Harlem Line between North White Plains and Grand Central Terminal this afternoon.
“There will be more service … on a day-by-day basis, as the MTA is working through this,” Cuomo said.
It’ll still take days for the system, as a whole, to be brought back. Bus service will resume today out of the Port Authority Terminal.
The MTA has not made any decisions on whether to refund MetroCard holders for the days of lost service. The agency did not refund riders any money when it shut down service for Tropical Storm Irene.
MTA chairman Joe Llota said the agency hopes to provide a little more subway service every day, until full restoration.
“We’re going switch by switch, signal by signal, power substation by power substation and making sure everything is up and running,” said the MTA chief said. “Our goal is to every day get this service back to normal back, to the situation that we were used to last week.”
Many stations, tunnels and storage yards were heavily damaged by Sandy.
Storm-battered New Yorkers slogged back to work this morning, gratefully inching through jammed streets, filled with all-too-recently-rare scenes of delivery trucks and commuters.
The Big Apple slowly opened for business, as rescuers and city crews continued their daunting task of clearing roads of storm debris and looking for missing New Yorkers.
Sandy’s brutalized New York and other Mid-Atlantic states Monday night and Tuesday morning, leaving 6.5 million East Coast homes and business still without power this morning.
Even though city buses were back on the road today, this morning’s commute was still a nightmare with no subway trains.
Buses, which were free of charge, were no faster than walkers as cars and delivery trucks seemingly jammed every major city thoroughfare.
“New Yorkers have been great all through this. We’re going to need some patience and tolerance. Traffic is very difficult,” Cuomo said. “There’s a high volume of traffic in the city itself.”
Many New Yorkers pounded pavement rather than deal with the snail’s pace traffic.
“There was no point waiting for the bus. I was walking faster than the traffic so I figured I’d keep going,” said Sunnyside resident David Curcio, 26, as he strolled over the 59th Street Bridge to his job at JP Morgan in Manhattan.
The four-mile foot commute didn’t bother him at all.
“I’m happy to get out of the house after being cooped up for so long,” he said.
Normally impatient New Yorkers didn’t seem to mind today’s massive inconvenience.
“I decided to hoof it. If it all goes south, I can hoof it right back,” said art gallery manager Janet Borden, 60, at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge, about to walk 50 minutes to her SoHo office.
“I usually drive I don’t know whether the parking garage would be functional. I don’t think my gallery has any eclectivity,. I have not been in since Sunday. We have four employees and I didn’t want everyone to have to go in. It’s stupid to make people go and sit around without electricity.”
The New York Stock Exchange got back to business this morning, with Mayor Bloomberg ringing the opening bell at 9:30 a.m. The markets had been closed for two days, the first time since 1888 that the exchange closed for two consecutive days due to weather.
Life slowly got back to normal at New York’s local airports, where flights began to arrive at JFK and Newark.
Although flights are expected to take off later this afternoon, countless passengers will still be stranded in Gotham from days of cancellations that might be here through the weekend.
San Francisco resident Jennifer Raiser, 48, was ticketed to leave today, but arrived at JFK only to learn her flight was cancelled. Now she won’t have a flight back to the coast until Friday.
“I’m going to miss the Giants parade today. That’s my biggest disappointment,” said Raiser, who wanted to see San Francisco’s civic celebration for its World Series-winning team.
“We’re lucky to be alive, lucky nobody [among her New York friends] got hurt.”
Port Authority spokesman Ron Marsico said JFK and Newark are open “on a very limited operational schedule.”
He urged passengers to call their carriers before heading to JFK or Newark. LaGuardia, where runways were flooded, remained closed this morning.
“US Airways operations at La Guardia, JFK and Newark will remain idle until at least noon on Thursday,” said the airline’s chief operating officer, Robert Isom.
Taxi & Limousine Commission officials have instructed cabbies to charge the first passenger on a trip the fare on the meter.
Drivers can then pick up a second fare headed in the same direction. That passenger will have to negotiate a fare with the driver before the trip continues. The city recommends $10 as a starting point for the second trip.
The city also authorized black cars, luxury limos and liveries to accept street hails. Normally, only yellow cabs can pick up passengers from the street.
Because those cars normally do not have meters, the fares must be negotiated and drivers are required to quote fares up front.
The TLC recommends $15 for trips within Manhattan below 96th Street, as well as for trips that stay within Manhattan above 96th Street.
Borough-to-borough trips should cost about $25, the TLC said. Cabbies who worked through the storm said most New Yorkers were grateful.
“If the meter said $10 they gave $15 and said, ‘You’re working very hard,’ ” said Tanzir Chowdhury, 28. “They were very appreciative.”
The Brooklyn Battery and Queens Midtown Tunnels are still closed due to damages sustained in the storm. The Cross Bay Bridge is also still closed.
All of the East River bridges are open. The Holland Tunnel is closed but the Lincoln is open.
With Post Wire Services