I’m not sure you can appreciate what a big deal a transit strike in NYC is if you don’t know New York. Maybe there are stats which contradict this, but I wouldn’t be surprised if New York is the only city in America where something close to a majority of the blue collar households do not own cars. That’s the real significance of those average salary statistics. The transit union is striking against people poorer than themselves and the availablity of cars for car-pooling is pretty limited. It’s air traffic controller time.