NEW YORK (AP) – With the city in the midst of another nerve-wracking countdown to a threatened transit strike, hopes dimmed late Monday that negotiators would be able to reach a deal to avert a crippling shutdown of the subway and bus system.

The midnight strike deadline passed with no word on whether transit workers would go on strike. The union board was meeting at its headquarters to discuss its next move.

Talks broke down about an hour before the deadline, and the Transport Workers Union and Metropolitan Transportation Authority offered bleak assessments of the prospects of avoiding a strike.

With an hour before the deadline, MTA spokesman Tom Kelly said the agency “has put a fair offer on the negotiating table. Unfortunately, that offer has been rejected.” He did not elaborate.

Earlier, union President Roger Toussaint gave his own pessimistic evaluation of the talks in a speech before a boisterous union gathering. “As we stand right now, with six hours to go until our deadline, it does not look good,” he said.

The down-to-the-wire negotiations came as workers at two private bus lines in Queens walked off the job, a move that Transport Workers Union Local 100 said could be the first phase of a citywide strike if the Metropolitan Transportation Authority doesn’t budge their way.

The two sides returned to the bargaining table at a midtown Manhattan hotel after making little progress over the weekend, but Toussaint warned that a full-blown strike was set to begin at 12:01 a.m. today.

“Keep your fingers crossed,” MTA Chairman Peter Kalikow told New Yorkers.

Meanwhile, the union posted a strike plan on its Web site, instructing its members to lock up facilities safely and document everything they do to prevent “management sabotage.”

If the union’s executive board calls for a walkout, buses will drop off all passengers and return to their depots. Subways will finish their trips as turnstiles are chained and locked. Exits will remain open to allow any last passengers off.

More than 7 million daily riders would be forced to find new ways to get around if the union’s more than 33,000 workers shut down the nation’s largest transit system.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said the walkout could cost the city as much as $400 million a day – that figure includes police overtime plus lost productivity and revenues. It would be particularly harsh at the height of the holiday shopping and tourist season, just days before Christmas and Hanukkah.

The mayor said Monday that a strike would freeze traffic into “gridlock that will tie the record for all gridlocks.”

“Cooler heads have to prevail,” Bloomberg said. “If this union strikes, it will severely hurt its members as well as the city.”

The contract expired Friday at midnight, but the two sides agreed to keep talking through the weekend and the union set a new deadline for Tuesday. The city had been bracing for a citywide transit shutdown for rush hour Friday.

Like last week, Bloomberg planned on sleeping on a cot at the Office of Emergency Management headquarters and walking across the Brooklyn Bridge to City Hall if there were a strike.

Commuter frustration was evident Monday, with people fed up with the uncertainty.

“Enough is enough,” said Craig DeRosa, who relies on the subway to get to work. “Their benefits are as rich as you see anywhere in this country and they are still complaining. I don’t get it.”

Pensions remained a major sticking point in the talks. The MTA wants to raise the age at which new employees become eligible for full pension from 55 to 62, which the union says is unfair.

The authority has also proposed annual raises of 3 percent for the next three years. The union wanted higher pay increases, but said Monday they would lower their demand if the authority agreed to reduce the number of disciplinary actions taken against workers.

In what could be the first wave of transit picket lines across the city, more than 100 employees of the striking Jamaica Buses Inc. and Triboro Coach Corp. bus lines were out early in Queens, many chanting “No contract, no work!”

The companies serve about 50,000 commuters, and are in the process of being taken over by the MTA. Thus, the union temporarily found a loophole to avoid the state law that prohibits strikes by public employees. Under the law, striking workers would have their pay docked and face hefty fines.

“No one wants to be out here,” said 36-year-old Triboro bus driver Frank Lomanto, standing outside the company depot. “But this is something we have to do.”

In midtown Manhattan, hundreds of union members rallied outside the governor’s office, partially blocking vehicular traffic and screaming for a transit system walkout. “Shut it down!” they chanted.

At a Jackson Heights transit hub shortly after midnight, Brunilda Ayala said she had no sympathy for the union.

“How can you give a raise to a bus driver who would make three old ladies walk home in the cold?” asked Ayala, 57.

Jose Padilla, 34, said he and fellow Coca-Cola employees are meeting at 4 a.m. to come up with a plan to put more workers in trucks to ensure their product gets delivered in the case of a strike.

“We have to get the Coke to the people,” Padilla said. “Just because there is a strike, people don’t stop drinking coke.”

A citywide bus and subway strike would be New York’s first since an 11-day walkout in 1980.

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Associated Press writers Amy Westfeldt, Desmond Butler and Pat Milton contributed to this report.

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On the Net:

Metropolitan Transportation Authority: http://www.mta.info/

Transport Workers Union: http://www.twulocal100.org

City contingency plans: http://www.nyc.gov/html/transitinfo/html/home.shtml