Hicksville rider says MTA should do more to inform Spanish speakers
Santo Cuevas didn’t know about the impending LIRR strike until late Friday afternoon, when he heard two men speaking in Spanish near Penn Station about it.
“I didn’t know if it was true,” Cuevas, 70, said in Spanish. “It was just something I heard in the street.”
The Dominican immigrant, a cleaner at a Manhattan restaurant, said the MTA should be notifying Spanish speakers of the strike possibility. “There should be publicity in Spanish,” the Hicksville resident said. “There are so many Hispanics here.”
The MTA also wasn’t giving enough information about service disruptions because of Thursday’s fire, said Cuevas, who sat against a post in Penn wondering when he could get home to Hicksville.
He looked expectantly at an electronic board, hoping that his train would appear on the list of departing trains amid a list that mostly showed routes with “No passengers.”
David Olson covers health care. He has worked at Newsday since 2015 and previously covered immigration, multicultural issues and religion at The Press-Enterprise in Southern California.
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