New Jersey is confronted with a possible transit strike. This is what to know.

Hundreds of thousands of commuters in New Jersey can be entangled in the first transit strike of the State in more than 40 years as soon as Friday morning.

The engineers who drive the commuters of New Jersey Transit have threatened to walk away after midnight on Thursday if the trade union that represents them cannot reach an agreement with the agency about a contract that has been negotiating for many months.

The engineers have said that they are looking for parity in wages with engineers from other commuters in the area. The Chief Executive of the Transit Agency, Kris Kolluri, has repeatedly said that it cannot afford the wage increases that the trade union is demanding.

The two parties met the National Mediation Board in Washington on Monday in a final attempt to resolve their differences. Mr. Kolluri said that the discussion was ‘constructive’ and that he looked forward to constant negotiations in good faith.

In the meantime, New Jersey Transit has drawn up a disaster plan. But Mr Kolluri said that the extra buses that would offer it as a replacement in the case of a strike could only handle about 20 percent of the daily train drivers.

The agency has asked commuters to make plans to work from home if their presence in the workplace is not essential. Mr. Kolluri said that a strike could take weeks.

How likely is a strike?

Most of the endangered transit attacks, such as the last in New Jersey nine years ago, do not come true.

But the tone of these negotiations has become heavier as the Deadline strike is approaching.

Last week Mr Kolluri asked the ‘Mental Health’ of Thomas Haas, the general chairman of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, after the members of the Union had overwhelmingly rejected an earlier agreement.

Mr. Kolluri and Union officials are shaking their hand on a deal that seemed to bridge the impasse more than a month ago. But the engineers of the Union voted down and sent their negotiator back to the negotiating table.

Mr. Kolluri has refused to increase the range of New Jersey Transit and said that every extra wage offered to the engineers should be paid to all 13 other trade unions of the agency.

“This is the deal that was offered that he shook my hands, about which he negotiated, and now he has to live with his consequences,” said Mr. Kolluri.

Mark Wallace, the national president of the engineers’ Union, said that Mr. Kolluri was not interested in reaching a deal. “He tries to tamper us with the citizens of New Jersey,” said Mr. Wallace.

What are the problems that need to be solved?

In most work negotiations, the two parties do not agree on a number of work rules, such as schemes and personnel levels. But this dispute is now only about money.

Mr. Haas said last week that the trade union had agreed to 95 percent of the requirements of New Jersey Transit.

“The only bottleneck we have his wages,” he said. “Every other part of this contract has been resolved.”

But the gap between the wage requirements of the trade union and what the agency offers is very wide.

Mr Kolluri said that the offer that the trade union voted in March would have increased the average annual wage of full -time engineers to $ 172,000 of $ 135,000. But Mr. Haas said those figures had been blown up. The trade union, he said, would like to accept a contract that increased the annual wage of engineers to $ 173,000.

In essence, Transit in New Jersey insists that the 450 engineers represented by the Union accept the same contract conditions that all other trade unions of the agency have accepted. Last week the agency announced a contract agreement with its largest trade union, which represents 5,500 employees of his bus network.

But the engineers say that they have to be paid on the same footing with the drivers of trains in the other forens railways of the region, including the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North Railroad. They say that those railways pay their engineers about $ 10 per hour more than the Transit of New Jersey pays.

What happens if there is a strike?

Most commuters did not remember the last transit strike in New Jersey, which took place in 1983 and lasted about three weeks. Another strike appeared in 2016, but was averted a day before it was started.

But the contingency plan that New Jersey Transit has created is comparable to the use used 42 years ago. These are chartered buses running from four satellite plots around the state to the bus terminal of the Port Authority in Midtown Manhattan or to stations of the Padtrain in North Jersey, from 19 May. There would be no chartered buses on the first day of the strike.

Each bus wears around 100 passengers, compared to no less than 1,000 on a full train, Mr Kolluri said. The buses will only accommodate about 20 percent of the 70,000 commuters who take trains to the city, he said.

Some displaced commuters will probably try to switch to existing bus routes that are managed by New Jersey Transit and private carriers. Others are likely to drive at least a part of the road to the city, adding traffic to already overcrowded roads, said transport experts.

“If the strike takes place, even with an emergency plan, this becomes incredibly disturbing for the region,” said Zoe Baldwin, vice -president for state programs at the Regional Plan Association. “It doesn’t matter which mode you are, you will have a more difficult commuting than normal.”