MTA NYC After Hurricane Sandy: Bus Service Resumes Tuesday While Subway and Schools Closed Until Further Notice

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has announced that limited bus service will start today at 5 p.m. with full restoration expected tomorrow. Fares will be waived on Tuesday and Wednesday. The buses will operate on a Sunday schedule.

However, there are no subway or commuter trains running until further notice.

NYC taxis, livery cabs and limousines are allowed to pickup street hails, multiple fares.

For the third consecutive day, New York City schools will remain closed on Wednesday, Oct. 31.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Sandy claimed the lives of 10 people in the city and that "the challenges our city faces in the coming days are enormous."

Sandy is being blamed for 18 deaths in the United States.

The mayor said "the storm brought something like 23 serious fires to parts of Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens, as well as City Island and the Bronx."

"The terrible fire on Breezy Point is now under control, but we believe we lost more than 80 houses," Bloomberg said. "The search and recovery operations there are ongoing. If any of you saw the pictures on television it looked like a forest fire out in the Midwest. The winds were just devastating, blowing from one building to the next one, and those buildings were close together. We are hoping and praying that there was no loss of life in those fires, but even if we can save every life we know that many people have lost their homes. I want them to know that they have our full support in the days and weeks ahead."

Bloomberg said there are over 6,000 people in the city's emergency shelters and the shelters will remain open "until New Yorkers can safely return to their homes."

Wall street is closed today and CNBC is reporting that it will reopen for normal trading operations with all U.S. equities, bonds, options and derivatives markets on Wednesday.

LaGuardia Airport is not expected to open Wednesday due to "extensive damage" and JFK may open on Wednesday.

The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey have reopened Outerbridge Crossing, George Washington, Goethals & Bayonne bridges.

All East River bridges are now open: Brooklyn, Manhattan, Williamsburg and Ed Koch Queensboro bridges all open.

According to the governor, 2,094,534 New Yorkers are without power. Nearly 800,000 Con Edison customers are powerless and the electric company said customers in Brooklyn and Manhattan should have "power back within four days," but all others in areas served by overhead lines will take "at least a week." Con Edison said that Hurricane Sandy is the largest storm-related outage in its history.

City officials are urging New Yorkers to report non-emergency situations to 311 and not "tie up 911 unless you have a life-threatening emergency."

Cuomo said the cleaning up after Sandy is a "longterm restoration and recovery effort."