New Jersey Transit urged riders to reach their destinations before the end of the day Thursday or risk being stranded as talks continued in a bid to avert a rail strike by train engineers that would affect some 350,

NJ Transit pushed a critical service advisory to its hundreds of thousands of customers Thursday, urging them to get to their destinations before midnight or risk being stranded at the start of the first rail strike in decades.

With contract negotiations still unsettled, NJ Transit workers started a strike Friday that snarled mass transit commutes.