Of course there would be no problem, if they closed down mass transit systems, and everyone drove an SUV like God intended.

h-man is correct. The best way to break the public service unions is to stop offering those public services. Auction off the infrastructure, balance the budget, break the unions, and lower taxes. Pure winnage.

Just to remind all of you, the transit and other unions are chump change compared to the Public Education bureaucracy.

If you all home school your kids, you won't need as much payroll and hiring for transit, bussing, and dropping kids off at their daily indoctrination sessions.

I wonder if Bloomberg could fire all the workers like Reagan did with PATCO air traffic controllers?

Toussant won election as TWU president because enough of the workforce thought the former union leaders had wimped out three years ago when they reached agreement on a new contract with the MTA without striking. So there's a pretty large percentage of the workforce that is going to have to find out first hand what the effects of their militancy are, when the fines and public backlash really starts coming down (but while as satisfying as it might be to some for Pataki and Bloomberg to pull a PATCO on the TWU and their membership while having management personnel run the subway trains, past history of doing that during a transit strike makes it unlikely that the MTA or the politicians -- or the state's insurers -- are going to try and tempt fate again).

I'll start taking public transportation to work (and give up the car) when the unions are broken. Deal, OJ?

That union should be more frightened of being replaced by robots. Plenty of places around the world have robots running their trains, including Paris.

Blue State Eloi: "It's a form of terrorism, if you ask me,'' said Maria Negron, who walked across the bridge. "I hope they go back to work.''

Here's my report from Manhattan, where I live and work. It's a dead heat who is more stupid -- MTA Management who mishandled how they presented their alleged surplus and the militants in the Union who ignore the reality that the transit system is operating at a deficit. My waitress friend at the diner down the street said, "The workers want to retire at 55 and move out of New York. If I don't work, I don't get paid. My husband drives a Yellow Cab. We don't get health insurance. These strikers don't have a clue about how other people live."

Enforcement of the illegality of the strike has no teeth. Increase the fines ten-fold. Throw the Union leaders in jail. And fire MTA management. Sadly none of this will happen. The politicians have no guts.

That union should be more frightened of being replaced by robots. Plenty of places around the world have robots running their trains, including Paris.

The 42nd St. shuttle was run without an operator or conductor over 40 years ago under a test program, which ended when the robot train was destroyed in what may or may not have been a suspicious fire at the Grand Central shuttle station.

New York never tried to run another robot train after that due to union objections, and their clout within the city kept the MTA from advancing past staffing rules that were set in place in the 1930s -- right now, the MTA faces a court battle just to operate trains where the motorman also opens and closes the doors, which they've been doing on the Washington D.C. subway sincce it opened in 1976. Hopefully, the current strike will give the MTA a chance to finally get a grip on the system's finances (and the $1 billion surplus is going to be gone in a few years, since the MTA has a bunch of outstanding bond debt coming due by 2010).