Local Preppers are doctors, doormen, charter school executives, subway conductors, advertising writers and happily married couples from the Bronx.
Ms. Dean is a weary soldier in a growing legion of teachers, subway conductors and executive secretaries, 17,000 strong, who make the voyage each day from the forested Pocono highlands to the steel escarpments of Manhattan.
"On shorter fares, riders will opt to walk or take the subway," said Bhairavi Desai, executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, a drivers' group that held a rally outside Pennsylvania Station on Sunday.
"What they're doing is just changing the measure, and they're not changing what is happening on the streets and in the subway," said Beverly Dolinsky, the executive director of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the M.T.A. and a nonvoting representative for riders on the authority's board.
Business executives, investors, brokers, subway workers and hot-dog vendors all seemed to agree on at least one thing -- after four edgy days when the market stayed shut, business as usual, even if bad, was far better than not opening at all.
"I feel like I'm living in a subway tunnel," said Donna Gloeckner, an executive at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
One private passenger carrier that remains is Spring Airlines, a tenacious startup run by a founder so frugal that he shares a 100-square-foot office with his chief executive and takes the subway to business meetings.
Now the firm is a powerful, diversified manufacturer of transportation equipment, including executive jets, commercial aircraft and subway cars.
"We don't need a Subway, we need children's shoes," said Judy Stanton, executive director of the Brooklyn Heights Association.
"They would go in, hit an A.T.M., get on a subway, then go to the next A.T.M.," said Susan Zawodniak, executive director of the NYCE network.
