'It's going to be hard'

Patricia Brown, a director of social work programs who lives in Brentwood, leaned against a column in front of the entrances to the LIRR trains at Penn Station Friday, waiting — and hoping, she said — for the 9:02 p.m. train.

She said she didn't have enough information about the strike to know if the commuter rail workers deserved more money.

"I don't know what they make," she said, but noted: "The staffers are always cordial."

If the strike happens, she said she'd work from home.

"I'm not taking the bus," she said.

Her current commute takes a little over an hour.

"I could work from home for a couple of days," Brown told Newsday.

"It's going to be hard," she said about the journey without the LIRR.

She said she took a $20 cab ride to Grand Central Terminal Thursday night to get home because of the fire inside an Amtrak tunnel.

By the end of a conversation with a reporter, she was reconsidering the bus.

"I guess I would take the bus to Jamaica and then transfer to the subway. I'm not driving. Driving would be insane with gas, tolls and parking"