NEW YORK (BLOOMBERG) -- For Shakira fans attending the superstar’s concert at the MetLife Stadium on Thursday, transport chaos began even before New Jersey Transit workers went on strike.
Hours ahead of the official walkout, the venue’s website announced there would be no service and posted dire warnings for devotees of the Hips Don’t Lie and She Wolf singer. Attendees using ride-share services should expect surge pricing and pickup delays of as long as two hours. Parents dropping off kids were urged to stay in the parking lot for the full show to avoid mayhem when it was over.
“Stuck here for 30 minutes trying to leave @MetLifeStadium,” an account with the handle UnfilteredMami posted on X, adding a photograph of bumper-to-bumper traffic. “Traffic lights all broken cops all around but no one is directing traffic!! We left the concert early too. Good luck to everyone getting home.”
Shakira is scheduled to perform again tonight, promising another evening of traffic woes. The stadium could be in for an even bigger transit headache over coming days: Beyonce is scheduled to perform five shows starting next week, and there’s already a Reddit thread where her fans are discussing strategies for coping with the transit strike in case it extends that long.
Hours after the last revelers staggered home from Thursday’s Shakira show, commuters woke up to a nightmare. NJ Transit locomotive engineers took to picket lines at 4 a.m. New York time, the first railroad strike in more than 40 years for the agency. Those who couldn’t work at home were forced to look for other routes, piling into buses or taking Uber rides to PATH trains operated by the Port Authority. Those alternatives were packed on Friday with people shut out of the rail lines.
The surface-level transit chaos comes amid disruptions in the sky as well. Newark Liberty International Airport has seen weeks of flight disruptions amid technical failures and shortages of air traffic controllers.
At the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan on Friday, 52-year-old Andrew Louis was in the midst of what he estimated would be an hours-long commute from his job as an overnight doorman in Jersey City to his home in Rockland County, New York. The trip usually takes 75 minutes.
“It’s gonna be 3 or 4 hours now,” Louis said, shaking his head as he considered the new reality. The round-trip journey, including his time at work, could stretch to 15 hours under the worst-case scenario. He wasn’t sure how long he could maintain that routine.
Noel Ihou, a 68-year-old immigrant from West Africa who has lived in the US for almost 20 years, said the strike was making his commute longer and more expensive, now requiring an Uber ride to get to a PATH station in Jersey City. He’s broadly disappointed with NJ Transit service in normal times, lamenting a decline in service.
“The trains are late, the buses are late or they will go by before the scheduled time, which is not OK,” Ihou said. But he was keen to make clear that he didn’t blame the striking workers, saying they deserved a fair wage. “They keep increasing the fare, but the service is not getting better.”
American Express Co., with its headquarters in downtown Manhattan, told employees who regularly commute to work on NJ Transit trains that they can work from home until further notice. Other firms were sending similar messages, a temporary reprieve from corporate efforts to refill offices after Covid work-from-home allowances.
Jeanne Martel, 53, the chief executive officer of a health care agency in New York, said she wouldn’t have come to the office Friday if it wasn’t for a client meeting that she couldn’t miss. She and her executive assistant, Cheryl Park, 55, took a car service from their New Jersey homes to the PATH station in Newark to catch a Manhattan-bound train.
“Everybody is set up to work at home for the short term, but in the long term, you know, there are times where you just have to be here,” Martel said. The strike is “certainly gonna wreak havoc if it goes on very long.”
Outside of Penn Station in Manhattan, seven long-tenured NJ Transit locomotive engineers, each dressed in a red shirt labeled “United We Bargain. Divided We Beg,” set up a picket line. NJ Transit locomotive engineers make $10 less per hour than those at other commuter rails in the region, and are the lowest paid commuter engineers in the US, Mark Wallace, the spokesperson and national president for the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, said in an interview at the picket line.
“We’re not asking to be at the top, we’re asking just to be close,” Wallace said.
NJ Transit CEO Kris Kolluri has called the union’s proposal unaffordable. The union rejected a tentative contract deal with the agency in April, and their counteroffer was denied thereafter.
Inside, Penn Station was almost empty. Ticket counters are closed, train terminals are shuttered and the station’s retail shops were all but abandoned.
Grace Leverett, a 21-year-old software engineer who commutes between Dover, New Jersey, and New York City, said she was on one of the last trains home before the strike began. She says the contingency buses operated by NJ Transit don’t serve her area, and private coaches are far more expensive. She was worried about what the strike meant for her social plans, particularly a Peach Pit concert scheduled in New York for Thursday, May 22.
“If the strike doesn’t end by Tuesday or Wednesday, then I’m gonna have to resell my ticket because I don’t think I’m gonna be able to make it in,” she said.
Uber said it was preparing for extra demand for the Shakira shows.
“Riders should expect higher wait times and surge pricing,” the company said in a statement. “We’re also adding a surcharge for trips to and from MetLife during events, with the extra amount going straight to drivers to help improve availability.”
Meanwhile, members of the Beyonce’s Beyhive fanbase plotted on Reddit, debating the merits of private buses versus ride shares or car rentals.
“I am so glad I hired a driver already for that date!” a user with the handle Positive-Honeydew-39 wrote on Reddit. “My friends called me bougie for it but they will thank me later!”