By rush hour tomorrow morning, setting foot into a taxi could cost $10, Fifth and Madison avenues could be shut to non-emergency vehicles, and cars with less than four passengers could be barred from entering Manhattan until 11 a.m.

As the deadline for a new contract for the Transport Workers Union nears and as the workers’ strike threat becomes an increasingly realistic possibility, Mayor Bloomberg yesterday outlined a detailed contingency plan for getting around the five boroughs in the absence of subways and buses.

“Painless isn’t the right word, because it will be pain,” Mr. Bloomberg said yesterday, standing with his top commissioners in the Blue Room at City Hall. “We are trying to make this as a city be able to maintain safety and to let people go about their business to the extent possible in the event of us losing our major ways of moving people around the city, the mass transit MTA system.”

The plan, which is available in full at www.nyc.gov, would set strict limits on who can drive into and around Manhattan. Between 5 a.m. and 11 a.m. on weekdays, only high-occupancy vehicles holding four or more people would be allowed to cross into Manhattan below 96th Street. No commercial vehicles would be allowed into Manhattan during those hours, although if they were already in Manhattan, they would be allowed to make deliveries on nonrestricted streets.

During the morning and evening rush hours, cars would be able to travel only in one direction over the Manhattan, Queensboro, and Williamsburg bridges, and in the Brooklyn-Battery, Holland, Lincoln, and Queens-Midtown tunnels.

A number of streets would be reserved for emergency vehicles, buses, and commuter vans with passengers between 5 a.m. and 8 p.m. on weekdays.

Those streets include two north and south avenues – Fifth and Madison – as well as five cross-town streets, including 26th, 29th, 49th, and 50th, all between First and 12th avenues. Part of Church Street would also be restricted.

Some streets in Lower Manhattan would be reserved around the clock for emergency uses. Those include Maiden Lane, Nassau Street, Rector Street, Vesey Street, and Warren Street.

The city also released a plan for taxis and livery cars, which will be in high demand if the subways and buses are not running. The city would allow cars licensed by the Taxi and Limousine Commission to pick up multiple passengers in a single trip. In addition, livery cars and commuter vans would be allowed to pick up passengers at bus stops and at carpool staging areas, which are mapped on the city’s Web site.

Taxis and livery cars would also charge fares based on zones rather than their normal metered fares. Manhattan will have four zones, and each borough outside of Manhattan will be a zone. Fares will be $10 a person entering a cab and traveling within a single zone and $5 for traveling into an additional zone.

In general, the mayor said, whoever is able to travel by foot or by bicycle – or to stay home altogether – would be better off in the event of a strike.

Mr. Bloomberg said some people would no doubt be harmed by a strike despite the city’s efforts to keep chaos in check. “The real losers in an illegal strike would be the people who would lose their jobs and not be able to feed their families. … There will be very sad cases of people getting very badly hurt,” he said. “Stores that traditionally at this time of the year sell the vast bulk of their yearly sales during this period will be very badly hurt. That will ripple through the economy. Strikers, if they strike, they are going to be badly hurt. These penalties – we believe we’ll be successful in the suit, and the Taylor Law itself has severe penalties. There are no winners in a strike.”

While Mr. Bloomberg said life would be harder in New York if there were a strike, he said the city doesn’t expect there would be shortages of basic goods like milk and eggs in city stores. He also recommended that tourists not cancel their travel plans to New York, suggesting that they might have “fun” milling around Midtown with everyone else.