With many cabbies expected to return to work today, the city’s taxi strike will likely limp to its deadline.

“I think this is a bust,” the managing director of a union that represents about 3,400 of the city’s more than 44,000 taxi drivers, the League of Mutual Taxi Owners, Vincent Sapone, said. “You’re going to see more cabs out there.”

The two-day strike, led by a union that says it represents about 10,000 of the city’s cabbies, the Taxi Workers Alliance, failed to make yesterday’s commute unbearable enough to force the city to sit down at the negotiating table. Still, the strike is planned to carry on through today.

“The city has not come to a stop,” Mayor Bloomberg declared yesterday at City Hall.

Taxi service at John F. Kennedy International Airport, where the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey records the number of cabs that come and go, was down 14%, and a majority of the drivers who work for the city’s garages were out on the streets, Mr. Bloomberg said.

Mr. Bloomberg gave credit for the limited impact of the strike to the city’s contingency plan, which calls for group taxis and standardized rates for drivers that proved to be a financial incentive.

“I usually work until I make $100, then I go home,” a veteran taxi driver, Asif Khan, 44, said while filling up his tank on Houston Street. “Today I will make $100 quicker than usual.”

Mr. Khan, who said he felt as if he was taking advantage of four British tourists yesterday by charging them $60 for a ride that would have normally cost $14, said he thought that cabbies would come out in droves today.

Highlighting the financial incentives, Mr. Bloomberg encouraged taxi drivers to head out to the airports and collect on group fares, which could total as much as $120 one way from JFK.

While the mayor and other city leaders deemed the strike a mere speed bump, the group leading the work stoppage, the Taxi Workers Alliance, claimed victory. The leader of the union, Bhairavi Desai, said 90% of all taxis were absent from city streets, according to news reports. The group did not return multiple phone messages left by The New York Sun. Several taxi industry experts who spoke with the Sun, including Mr. Sapone and a spokesman for the Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade, Michael Woloz, said they strongly disagreed with Ms. Desai’s statistics.

For some commuters on the Upper East Side this morning, the strike made the trip to work more difficult. The taxis that congregate on 72nd Street and York Avenue were less numerous than usual. Annoyed at being late for her job running the Perlman Music Center on West 69th Street, Maureen Nash, 30, decided to take a bus after 20 minutes of waiting in vain for a cab.

If enough cabbies return to work today, the city has the power to return fares to their regular rates.