LIRR strike ends as MTA, unions reach deal; train service begins noon Tuesday

A deal to end the historic Long Island Rail Road union strike was reached late Monday night, with riders expected to see a resumption of rail service by noon on Tuesday, Gov. Kathy Hochul said.

The agreement, reached shortly before 9 p.m., provides relief to the tens of thousands of harried and frustrated Long Islanders who saw their commutes double or even triple during the first workday of the dispute.

"I want to thank New Yorkers, Long Islanders, particularly, who made all the accommodations; who had to work from home; who sacrificed; who had to put up with inconveniences," Hochul said at a news conference Monday night.

Hochul declined to answer questions about the terms of the deal, including about wages and work rules, but said MTA negotiators reached the deal without having to raise fares or taxes.

LIRR president Rob Free said service will resume on the four electrified branches — Port Washington, Huntington, Ronkonkoma and Babylon — at noon Tuesday. All other branches will resume service at 4 p.m. Tuesday using normal weekday schedules, he said.

The deal was reached on the third day of the strike, which brought service on the nation's busiest commuter rail system to a grinding halt and after the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the leaders of the five LIRR unions representing about half the railroad's 7,000-member workforce restarted talks early Monday.

An MTA spokesman said there will be no morning service Tuesday on the LIRR given how long negotiations had continued.

"We're looking forward to our members getting back to work and doing what they do best, which is serving the region," said Kevin Sexton, vice president of the locomotive engineers union.

Shuttles on Tuesday morning

MTA chairman and CEO Janno Lieber said shuttle buses will operate in the morning, just as they did Monday.

"We had to find a deal that gave people fair raises, but didn't put the hit on the riders; the taxpayers; that didn't blow up the MTA budget, which would have bad consequences for everybody," Lieber said.

Earlier Monday, while hundreds of striking workers picketed outside the MTA's Manhattan headquarters and at train-less LIRR rail hubs across the Island — demanding a pay raise they said is needed to keep up with the rising cost of living and that the agency contended would force an 8% fare increase, tax hikes or service cuts — sleep-deprived Nassau and Suffolk commuters found alternative routes to work.

Many ventured onto traffic-clogged highways, enduring standstill commutes during the morning and evening rush hours. Others trekked to their destination by subway, bus, ferry or even electric scooter, with some leaving their homes before dawn and returning after dark.

Veronica Muzek, of Farmingdale, works in the city as a teacher and said her commute was about two hours longer than it usually is.

"It was pretty smooth, all things considered," said Muzek, who got on the bus at JFK Airport at 3:30 p.m. before arriving at Hicksville train station at 5 p.m. "Very obnoxious, having to go through all the hoops, but it is what it is."

Monday's negotiations

After failing to reach an agreement to end the strike over the weekend, the two sides returned to the bargaining table on the 16th floor of 2 Broadway at 7:30 a.m. Monday. The negotiations continued into the evening hours, breaking occasionally for meals and to throw barbs at the other side through the media.

At one point early in the day, four sources with knowledge of negotiations told Newsday that the two sides were making progress toward an agreement to end the strike, the first in 32 years.

Hochul was seen entering the building through a side entrance to meet with top MTA managers, ducking members of the media gathered on Broadway, where protesters were chanting, "New York is a union town — Kathy Hochul shut it down!"

Meanwhile, MTA chief negotiator Gary Dellaverson, his long gray hair flowing in the wind, emerged with a police officer who escorted him to the Bowling Green subway station. Dellaverson said he was taking an uptown train to retrieve something from his office.

But fleeting hopes for a deal were dampened by early afternoon, before being revived hours later.

"The unions have shown us that they have no sense of urgency in getting this resolved," Dellaverson said during an afternoon news briefing interrupted repeatedly by horn honking, construction work and sirens.

Sexton, vice president of one of the striking LIRR unions, responded by calling the MTA's claims that the unions were dragging their feet in restarting talks "laughable," adding that negotiations took "two steps forward and one step back."

Strike's cascading effects

The five striking unions, which last saw a pay increase in 2022, have agreed with the MTA on a retroactive wage increase for 2023-2025 of 3% in each of the first two years and 3.5% in the third year — which several other agency transit unions also have accepted.

The disagreement centered around pay for 2026. The unions had asked for a 5% raise, and the MTA had countered with lower amounts while also asking that new hires contribute more than the current 2% for their healthcare. The unions had called the MTA proposal "unacceptable" while also rejecting being paid a portion of the fourth year of raises as a one-time lump sum.

The MTA argued that the striking LIRR workers are already the highest-paid railroad workers in the nation, making on average $136,000 a year. Agency officials said if they agreed to the union's demands, the rest of the MTA’s 50,000-member workforce would expect similar raises, triggering larger fare hikes and service cuts.

The strike, the first for the LIRR since 1994, had cascading effects across the region Monday.

Educators and hospital workers, whose jobs defy telecommuting, struggled to find ways into work, while parents hoping to see their children graduate from Hofstra University on Monday looked for creative routes to the Island.

Businesses near LIRR stations that rely on daily commuters to stay afloat described sharp declines in revenue, with fears the dip may continue for days or weeks.

Meanwhile, striking LIRR workers did their best to stay cool at the Ronkonkoma LIRR station parking lot while waiting — nervously at times — for word of a potential breakthrough.

"I thought they would settle" before a strike was declared, said James Ristano, 52, a substation electrician from Selden, who was walking the picket line. "I didn’t think it would come to this."

'Exhausted' commuters

Stuck between the warring factions were the more than 270,000 daily LIRR riders who were left scrambling for options Monday, few of them good.

Doris Bell, a nurse at Brooklyn Children’s School, woke up at 4 a.m. to catch an early bus from Huntington.

Commuters, she said, "are in the middle of all of this."

The MTA started running shuttle buses at 4:30 a.m. from six Long Island locations to subway stations in Queens, including the Bay Shore, Huntington and Ronkonkoma LIRR stations, along with Hempstead Lake State Park and the Hicksville and Mineola stations.

But there were no eastbound buses to the latter three locations in the afternoon, leaving many flustered commuters struggling to make it home while others learned too late that they'd boarded the wrong bus.

Stacey Richards, a nurse from Massapequa Park, said she was "exhausted" from her commute.

She'd been awake since 2:30 a.m. to catch a 4:30 a.m. shuttle from Hicksville. A little after 4 p.m., she boarded a shuttle outside Howard Beach-JFK station for the final leg of her journey home.

Others took the inconvenience in stride.

"I’m not too worried about this going on for weeks," said Craig Grassi, 57, an IT worker from Huntington, who had been waiting for 90 minutes at Jamaica station for a shuttle back to the Island. "I can manage."

Marty Oster, 60, of Hicksville, said the shuttles had added about an hour to his commute but he wasn't too bothered. A member of Teamsters Local 282, he said he understood the difficulties faced by the negotiators.

"You’ve got five different unions trying to negotiate for five unions," he said before boarding a bus from the Howard Beach-JFK station. "It is what it is."

Highways offer little relief

For those commuters who opted to drive their own vehicles to work or school, Long Island's highways offered little relief, with the Long Island Expressway and Northern State Parkway adding an additional 60 to 90 minutes to many commutes.

Fannie Lee, 53, a financial aid counselor at Nassau Community College, said she left her Brentwood home at 5:30 a.m. on Monday, 45 minutes earlier than usual "in order to not suffer from any potential road rage."

But she nonetheless encountered double the amount of traffic on her commute to the Uniondale school and was expecting an even worse trip home.

"It's going to be atrocious," Lee said. "To be honest, I've stressed about it all weekend."

Others got creative in their commutes, including 20 NYU Langone Manhattan-based employees who departed from Glen Cove’s ferry terminal early Monday morning.

Demand was also brisk for the Hampton Jitney, the Calverton-based business that ferries summer travelers between Manhattan and the East End.

"We are adding trips tomorrow westbound to help East End commuters heading into the city," said company president Geoffrey Lynch.

After a pair of ferries from Astoria to Rockaway, two subways to Howard Beach and a two-hour MTA shuttle ride to Bay Shore, Aneta Holanova and Jammie Cuadrado’s trip to Fire Island was still far from over.

"We rented a place," Cuadrado, 32, told Newsday early Monday evening, "but then we realized we couldn't get there."