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And then there were the parents, calling in rapid succession. One wanted a quick ride to Intermediate School 318 in Williamsburg, another to the Brooklyn Latin School in East Williamsburg. Yet another was heading to Public School 297 in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

"It's been crazy," said Mr. Diaz, an even-keeled 19-year-old, before whispering at a peeved passenger into the mouthpiece of his phone: "Two more minutes, two more minutes."

The New York City school bus strike, now in its second week, has been unsparing in its misery, to the students and parents who must find new ways to school; to the bus companies who cannot earn money for their routes; to the drivers marching on picket lines in freezing weather. But if there have been any winners, they might be the livery cab companies and drivers who, along with subways and buses, have become the de facto transportation system for more than 100,000 children.

At Brooklyn Car Service in Williamsburg, for example, Mr. Diaz and his co-workers said that since the strike began, they have seen a 40 percent increase in weekday morning calls.

A few miles away, at Myrtle Car Service, dispatchers have recorded between a 14 and 29 percent increase in weekday business, with calls reaching close to 1,800 one day last week. Drivers at Sunnyside Car Service say they have seen a 10 percent increase.

"It's been very busy," said Manuel Peralta, a driver for Family Car Service in Park Slope, chatting from behind the wheel of his 2005 Lincoln Town Car. Mr. Peralta, 54, says that since the strike, his take-home pay has spiked to $250 a day, up from $150.

In a typical week, he said, he picks up one or two students "because they're late." On Tuesday alone, he shuttled three students and their parents to school, including one who headed to the Upper East Side, a $40 fare. And in the afternoon, he drove one home. By Wednesday morning, he was already cultivating new regular customers, parents requesting his car for their now routine jaunts to school.

Leroy Wallace, a driver for Myrtle Car Service, says his take-home pay has increased by $50 to $60 a day, as he shuttles students and parents in his 2007 black Cadillac from Downtown Brooklyn to as far away as Bayside, Queens. And while Mr. Wallace, who normally takes home $175 on a "lucky day," says he has considerable empathy for putout parents, he is not complaining. "I thank God for the money," he said.

The Education Department has offered to reimburse taxi or livery cab fare for students who normally get picked up by buses at their door (generally, special education students), and for children as old as sixth graders who live where public transportation to their school "is not readily available," though a department spokeswoman said that as long as parents filled out the reimbursement forms, the city would pay them back. Some livery cab companies can bill the city directly for the fares of low-income disabled students who cannot pay out of pocket.

The department said it was too soon to know how much the city would be paying for alternative transportation, though the cost would be offset by savings from not paying bus companies for routes that are out of commission. About 2,670 of the 7,700 routes were running Thursday morning, mostly those whose drivers are not members of the striking union, Local 1181 of the Amalgamated Transit Union. The union is on strike because the city, seeking to save money, is soliciting new bids from bus companies for 1,100 special education routes, but without traditional job protections for current union members. The two sides disagree on whether such protections are legal.

Because of its loose structure, the livery cab industry has been able to expand to meet the new demand. Most of the 52,500 drivers work independently, owning their own cars, and pay a weekly fee, typically about $100, to dispatch companies, who then hook them up with passengers. In a business where profits can be meager and there are no benefits, news of the uptick has spread, sending more drivers onto the city streets. On a typical morning, about 30 drivers work with Brooklyn Car Service. This week, twice that many were doing so.

"I thought there'd be business today," said one driver, Felix Siri, who took his Ford Explorer out Tuesday. He had the time because there was nothing happening at his regular job: he is a school bus driver on strike.

He drove around his Brooklyn neighborhood until he got a call to do a pickup in front of the Roberto Clemente Plaza in South Williamsburg. The mission: get Damon Marin, a yawning 8-year-old, to his third-grade classroom at Public School 380, about a mile away.

"We're late," Damon's mother, Jasmin, told Mr. Siri as she maneuvered herself up into his cab with Damon and his oversize backpack following behind.

Outside his rambling school building Wednesday morning, livery cars abounded. There were black Town Cars and Suburbans and silver Camrys displaying a variety of company decals, pulling up one after the other next to parked cars.

Climbing out of a Town Car, William Sanchez, a Manhattan construction worker and the father of an 8-year-old, said he had just paid $7 for the trip.

"Now when I call and give my address, they know where I want to go," he said.

Inside one car, a stressed-out dispatcher could be heard ticking off driver identification numbers from the radio: "I need a driver; I need a driver!"