Transit strike causes headaches in New York.

Byline: Miriam Hill

NEW YORK _ Commuters and visitors braced for a second day of transportation headaches Wednesday after the first transit strike here in 25 years, only days before Christmas, upended 7 million riders.

Travelers crammed into Penn Station and Grand Central Terminal and jammed highways Tuesday night trying to leave the city. The evening commute was as frigid and spirited as, though perhaps angrier than, it had been in the morning, when even Mayor Michael Bloomberg walked over the Brooklyn Bridge to get to work.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Transport Workers Union appeared to grow even further apart, with escalating rhetoric and no date set to resume contract talks, which ended abruptly Monday night.

The MTA asked the state Public Employment Relations Board to formally declare an impasse, the first step toward forcing binding arbitration of the contract.

Also Tuesday, Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Theodore Jones imposed a $1 million fine on the union for each day its 33,000 …