A Long Island Rail Road strike would be a “terrible disruption” for the city — and Mayor de Blasio should be in town to deal with it rather than gallivanting around Italy on vacation, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani said Tuesday.
“It was my view that the mayor has to be omnipresent. When an emergency takes place, you should be here,” Giuliani told Geraldo Rivera on WABC Radio.
“If everything was hunky-dory and rosy and no problems . . . but the part that I find troubling is that we have this strike coming up.”
The MTA and the LIRR unions have no scheduled talks, and a strike is scheduled for 12:01 a.m. Sunday — two days after Hizzoner’s planned departure.
Up to 150,000 people use the LIRR on weekdays, and in the event of a strike they would be forced to cram onto already packed subways or further jam traffic-clogged roads.
The city’s Office of Emergency Management would coordinate the city’s response to the overcrowding, which would also put a further strain on NYPD resources.
“It isn’t true that you can run the city from far away,” said Giuliani. “If there is a strike, you need to be here to manage the strike, because that’s a terrible disruption.”
De Blasio is scheduled to hit bella Italia for a 10-day holiday with his wife, Chirlane McCray, and kids Dante and Chiara.
The Mayor’s Office told The Post that de Blasio is able to lead the city from afar.
“The city has a significant contingency plan in place and is closely coordinated with the state should there be a strike,” said mayoral spokesman Phil Walzak. “The mayor will be in constant contact with his team while away, and is prepared to return early if circumstances require it.”
De Blasio’s position is a far cry from his comments when Bloomberg was golfing in Bermuda just hours after the fatal Metro-North crash last December.
“For me, it would be, generally speaking, important to be there,” de Blasio said at the time. “My instinct in these things is to be present even if the city is not the lead.”
Giuliani called on both de Blasio and Gov. Cuomo to compel the MTA and the unions to sit down and settle.
According to an analysis by state comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, the LIRR strike would hit the New York region with an economic blow of up to $50 million a day.
Additional reporting by Yoav Gonen