New York, New Jersey crawl out from Sandy's devastation New Yorkers took their first tentative steps Wednesday to regain their lives in the stressful aftermath of super storm Sandy despite continuing power outages, a snarled transportation system and the shock of floods and fire. But in parts of New Jersey, across the Hudson River, the new day revealed the extent of devastation. Serious flooding inundated the area around Hoboken, where emergency evacuations continued. Along the Jersey Shore and barrier islands, crown jewels of the state's important tourist injury, entire neighborhoods were crushed, flooded and swamped with mountains of sand. President Obama, off the campaign trail for the third day to deal with storm-related issues, will tour the devastated areas with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie While a wide swath of the nation assessed the damage as emergency supplies and crews poured into hard-hit areas, the storm once known as Hurricane Sandy continued to weaken in Pennsylvania with "no discernible surface circulation," the National Weather Service reported. Sandy has become a trough of low pressure, but strong winds were still possible over the Great Lakes and parts of the Northeast and there remained a danger of more flooding, the weather service said. In the wake of the cyclonic system created by the merger of Sandy, a western storm and cold Canadian air, at least 55 deaths were reported in the United States. Property damage was estimated in the billions of dollars, and with the loss of productivity from the millions of workers who stayed home, the tab could hit as much as $50 billion, according to some insurance estimates. More than 8 million customers lost power during the storm and efforts to bring everyone back on line were proceeding -- but slowly in some places. After days of atmospheric turbulence, the sun returned to Manhattan and there were small green shoots of recovery. Some buses rolled, as did taxis. Bridges that had been shut -- turning Manhattan into an isolated and besieged enclave -- reopened. Cars clogged some roadways during a tentative morning commute. Power was still out in many parts of Lower Manhattan and cellphone service was still spotty because of flood damage. Full restoration of both was at least days away and perhaps longer, according to the ConEdison power company. More than 337,000 customers were off the grid and full services could take more than a week to restore to the outlying boroughs and Westchester County. The city's subway system remained crippled; the under- and above-ground arteries that link the wilds of Canarsie in Brooklyn to the Gun Hill Road section of the Bronx were closed. No one was sure about when service would be restored as parts of the subway were still flooded by the corrosive salt from seawater that poured in during the record surges of up to 14 feet. Brooklyn resident Marie Constant left her home as usual at 7 a.m. Wednesday and tried to take a bus to work. She said she missed the subways. "With the train, 1, 2, 3 and you're there!" said Constant, whose subway commute gets her to her desk in an hour. She said she had been trying to get to work for more than two hours. "If I'd walked I would already have been there," she said with a slight chuckle, staring at what could have been a mirage but appeared to be the outline of a bus in the distance up Atlantic Avenue. Those who opted out of waiting, or who found the dizzying array of bus numbers and cobbled-together routes too confusing to sort out, battled each other over cabs. Although New Mayor Michael Bloomberg had recommended that cabs pick up multiple passengers, nearly all those heading into Manhattan on this brisk autumn morning carried just one rider and moved past people like Adrian Zanchettin, who had teamed up with two others in hopes of sharing a cab to his office in Manhattan. "It's so handicapped me!" he said, slightly incredulously, admitting that like so many other city dwellers, he relied on the subway and rarely if ever, used buses. "It's so selfish," he added of the cabs that passed with just one person inside. A fellow commuter, a dignified-looking woman in her 60s with carefully coiffed silver hair and a tailored, black overcoat on her delicate frame, leaned into one livery cab's window and tersely reminded the driver that the mayor had told people to share taxis. The driver insisted he had not heard that and drove off, one person in the back of the car.