The agency’s contingency plan is to move rail commuters to busses, but only about 20,000 of the daily rail commuters could be accommodated through bus routes, president and chief executive officer of NJ Transit Kris Kolluri said. The plan won’t go into effect until Monday, leaving commuters to fend for themselves on Friday.

NJ Transit rail engineers are set to strike if a deal cannot be reached by the midnight deadline.A last-ditch effort is underway to avert the strike, which is expected to impact more than 300,000 commuters as early as Friday morning.

It was the Garden State’s first transit strike since 1983 and will affect hundreds of thousands of morning commuters in the New York Metropolitan area.