Commuting contingencies

Carpooling with co-workers, driving to another location, trying a different mode of transportation and taking time off from work are the alternate plans some Five Towns residents have as a Long Island Rail Road strike looms. Union officials say workers may walk off work on July 20.

Cedarhurst resident Jeffrey Leb has used the LIRR for five years. He takes the train to get to his job as the state director of OU Advocacy, the public policy arm of the Orthodox Union, in Manhattan’s Financial District.

Leb usually takes the 7:58 or 8:19 a.m. Cedarhurst train, and transfers at Jamaica for a train to Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn, where he jumps on the subway. Occasionally he takes a train to Penn Station and connects to the subway downtown.

“If the LIRR goes on strike,” Leb said, “I’ll either carpool in to work with co-workers or drive into Far Rockaway and take the ferry, which departs from Beach 108th Street and goes to Pier 11 in downtown Manhattan.”

Instead of taking one of three trains from Atlantic Terminal on the way home, he said, he would “need to leave work a bit earlier and either take the ferry or carpool with co-workers or friends who live nearby” the Five Towns. He usually takes the 6:27, 6:59 or 7:56 p.m. train home.

Talia Englander, a leasing associate for a Brooklyn real estate firm, also takes a morning train — the 7:27 — from Cedarhurst to Atlantic Terminal. Including her three years at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in Manhattan, Englander has been using the LIRR regularly for five years. In the event of a strike, she said, she would most likely carpool with a co-worker who drives into Brooklyn every day.

Having to go by car and being stuck in traffic isn’t something she is looking forward to, Englander said. She likes the reliability and comfort of the LIRR’s quiet car and predictably getting to work at around 8 a.m. “I just hope [the strike] doesn’t happen,” she said. “It would inconvenience a lot of people.”