Mayor Michael Bloomberg continued to focus on the issue of pensions on Friday, a day after Transport Workers Union Local 100 agreed to end its three-day transit strike, sparked by the MTA's demand to increase pension contributions for new employees.As negotiations involving the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the union and Public Employee Relations Board mediators continued at a midtown hotel, the mayor said that government and labor leaders are facing a crisis of rising pension and medical costs which will force changes to the current system."We've all got to come up with a solution to this problem," he said. "And the union leaders keep saying no, not on our backs, but the fact of the matter is that eventually we're going to have to come up with an agreement because the public says, 'I don't want to pay more taxes.'"TWU Local 100 president Roger Toussaint had accused the mayor of derailing transit contract talks by pushing for pension changes at the MTA to set a precedent for a new pension system for city workers. Bloomberg denied that he had involved himself in the negotiations.The key issue in the talks appears to be the MTA's pension offer, which proposed that new employees contribute 6 percent of their salary over their first 10 years. The union argued that contract talks were the wrong place to examine the pension.As the strike ended, state mediators suggested the two sides had agreed to talk further about ways to save money elsewhere. Toussaint continued to face criticism Friday from some executive board members about the decision to end the strike after three days and return to work."I voted not to go on strike to begin with, but why go out and then go back without any certainty of what we got," said William Pelletier, a vice president with the union. "It takes your leverage off the table."But Larry Hanley, a vice president of Amalgamated Transit Workers, who was in on the talks on behalf of bus union locals 726 and 1056, said Toussaint's gambit will pay off. "What other union leader has the vision and strength to lead a workforce in a strike which happens to be illegal to preserve the integrity of the benefits of future workers?" Hanley said. "It's a remarkable thing."Both sides continued to adhere to a media blackout.In Brooklyn Friday, an administrative judge with PERB met with lawyers from the TWU and MTA over a second element of a complaint filed by the union, which alleged that the agency had improperly raised pension plan changes during the negotiations. Days earlier, PERB refused to grant a injunction to the union to prevent the MTA from raising pensions in the talk, saying such a move was "not warranted."In that ruling, the judge in the case took a slap at the TWU, saying that it "perverts the law" to grant an injunction on the grounds that not granting it would lead to a strike. "It may reward the threat of unlawful conduct and may even create incentives to engage in such threats," the decision said.A second claim by the TWU that it was an "improper practice" to even raise the pension issue in the talks is still pending. If the PERB judge finds in favor of the union, the MTA would have to remove the pension proposal from arbitration.A day after the strike, even as city officials were mothballing the strike contingency plan, transportation advocates were saying that the city should examine whether elements of the plan could be applied more broadly.The HOV rules, which required four occupants per car to pass 96th Street, received high marks. But they also created a secondary rush hour at 11 a.m."It might be worth looking at for congestion management, if done better," said Teresa Toro, the New York City coordinator for the Tri-State Transportation Campaign.Both Toro and Noah Budnick of Transportation Alternatives also praised the decision to widen bike lanes and place cones on certain avenues. Bicycle ridership jumped during the strike."The immediate thing is the protected bike lanes that the city created on the avenues were a huge success," Budnick said. "They really encouraged New Yorkers to ride to work, and that shows the kind of bike lanes that New York City needs to encourage."