By CHRISTINE HAUSER
Published: November 5, 2012
Students were told to dress warmly as they trickled back to chilly classrooms on Monday, and many subways, trains and buses were rolling again, but a week after Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc on the region the return to work and school was still a challenge as the New York City area struggled to recover.
Long lines at bus stops, impossibly packed trains and padlocked platforms attested to the difficulties of the first Monday commute with a public transit system still hobbled from the storm, particularly in the suburbs on Long Island and in New Jersey.
Making matters worse, officials warned that persistent gas shortages would swell the number of people vying for what mass transportation was available. The morning was filled with reports of commuters left standing as suburban trains and buses filled to capacity passed them by.
Many children in New York City returned to schools that had no heat, and others had to adjust to different schedules and different ways of getting to schools because the schools they had attended were still too damaged to open. School districts across the region also reopened, but many remained closed and were not scheduled to reopen until next Monday.
At Public School 2 in Chinatown, power was on but there was no hot water or heat, and food in the freezer had to be thrown out. “We expect to carry on as usual,” said the acting interim principal, Bessie Ng. She e-mailed teachers telling them to dress warmly.
“The students normally come with many layers,” said Ms. Ng. If they do not, the staff will find something warm for them, she said.
The drive into Manhattan from New Jersey remained an ordeal, with delays of 60 to 90 minutes at the Lincoln Tunnel. Drivers still could not use the Holland Tunnel, which was open only to buses. And buses themselves were in high demand with PATH not operating and New Jersey Transit rail still far from running a regular schedule.
At a bus stop in Union City, N.J., about three dozen people watched as several overcrowded New Jersey Transit buses passed. Even some of the private minibuses that compete with the buses were too full to accommodate any more passengers. In Montclair, the private Decamp line commuter buses passed dozens of potential passengers at corner after corner, leaving people groaning at the curb. Some people were waiting well over an hour.
On the rails, commuters also headed through a transformed transit landscape. In coastal Monmouth County, N.J., which was hard hit by the storm, some commuters left behind neighborhoods still without power. Platforms were overwhelmed with passengers; New Jersey Transit had to shut down service out of Woodbridge by 7:26 a.m. because of overcrowding.
“I had this weird and uneasy feeling this morning leaving my wife and two young daughters home alone in the dark,” Nick Caputo, 44, an engineering supervisor at the United Nations, said as he boarded a 6 a.m. bus in Aberdeen to the Port Authority. “But I had no choice; I had to get back to work.”
David Cairo, 43, an electrician in Manhattan who lives in Matawan, was about to get into his car and drive to the Woodbridge train station for a connection to Penn Station.
“There are no trains running out of Matawan so I need to drive to Woodbridge,” he said. “This is pretty inconvenient, but at least power was restored to home last night — that makes life a lot more tolerable.”
In addition, the requirements for at least three passengers to a car headed into Manhattan no longer remained, but two other tunnels into Manhattan, the Queens-Midtown and the Brooklyn-Battery, remained closed.
For many people, Monday was the first day back on the job after Hurricane Sandy swept through the region almost a week ago, making landfall last Monday night with violent winds, flooding and rains that turned thousands of people homeless and has killed more than 40 in New York City.
With so many trying to salvage their belongings from the silt of what was left of their homes, or still cleaning out mounds of sand from what remained, those who were dealing with the frustrations and impatience of a commute in a city not yet back on its feet were better off.
Falling temperatures, and more wind and rain is forecast for the region this week, looming over the recovery of thousands of people still dealing with power failures, which means no elevator service in high rises. Schools, too, were open, although there were fewer of them because of their use as shelters or because they are inoperable from the storm damage.
For those that were open on Monday, students were instructed to dress warmly.
At. P.S. 2 in Chinatown, children played outside in a chilly breeze as others ate breakfast — cereal with shelf-safe milk — most with their coats still on in a basement cafeteria.
Maggie Chin, the president of the Parent Teacher Association, said some parents had power interruptions even after lights came on for most the area, and some did not have heat in nearby buildings.
Cindy Yuan was not worried that her daughters in third grade and kindergarten would be cold. They came with sweaters and coats, she said. Her family lives nearby and lost power and heat after the storm but has it now.
“Put on your coat if you’re going outside,” the principal told one student in the basement. “Where’s your coat?” she asked another.
P.S. 2 also is a polling place. Workers were delivering cartons stamped “Emergency Ballot Box” from the Board of Elections on Monday morning.
In front of the Lower East Side building that houses Public Schools 134 and 137, parents led small children bundled in extra coats and animal hats through the blue metal doors. For many, it was a relief to have someone else take care of the children for the first time in days after a week spent playing Uno by candlelight and listening to the radio.
“ ‘Mommy, I can’t take this!’ ” Aura Salcedo, 43, recalled her 8-year-old son saying as he endured a week with no computer or TV, rolling her eyes. “I tell him, ‘Honey, back in the day this is how people lived!’ ”
In the subway system, most trains were back, but the B train was still out of service. The G and the L trains were also unable to reach Manhattan, leaving a large swath of north Brooklyn without reliable public transportation. And so just after 6 a.m. on Monday, Jacqueline Marolt, 27, a freelance scenic artist, was standing at the B62 bus stop on Bedford and Manhattan Avenues in Williamsburg, headed to work. Typically, about half a dozen people gather there at 6 a.m. But on Monday, Ms. Marolt stood with approximately 60 fellow commuters. Just two buses crammed with people passed by between 6 and 7 a.m. Fewer than 10 people were able to shove their way on to the first bus. The second one flashed a “Next Bus Please” sign, and simply flew by.
Her commute required flexibility and ingenuity. Ms. Marolt’s plan: take the B62 from Brooklyn to Queens, switch to the No. 7 train and head into Manhattan, change to the A/C/E, get off at Penn Station, and hop a New Jersey Transit train to Secaucus Junction. She’d mapped out the route in a large notebook.
She faced at least four hours in transit, she said.
“I’m frustrated,” she said, but added: “There’s people who don’t have anything. Who’s out there with those people? In contrast to that, what are you going to do? Five or six hours in transportation is a small thing.”
Posted By: Siebra Muhammad
Monday, November 5th 2012 at 12:50PM
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