Sedans, Sprinter Vans and Coaches for Every Corner of Brooklyn

A borough with its own center

Brooklyn is the most populous of New York's five boroughs, and it does not orbit Manhattan. Downtown Brooklyn is a working business district, with Borough Hall, the state and federal courthouses, the MetroTech office campus and several university buildings. North along the waterfront, DUMBO and Williamsburg have filled old warehouses and factories with technology, media and design companies, and the Brooklyn Navy Yard has become a base for manufacturers and studios.

That changes what a car service here is for. A good share of Brooklyn trips never cross the river: a lawyer between a Downtown Brooklyn office and the courthouse, a DUMBO team heading to a client in Williamsburg, a family from Park Slope to a relative in Bay Ridge. The ones that do go to Manhattan tend to be meetings and flights, and they are timed around the bridges.

Brownstone Brooklyn

Much of residential Brooklyn — Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Park Slope, Fort Greene — is row upon row of brownstones and townhouses on narrow, tree-lined, one-way streets. There is rarely a doorman or a driveway. The front door is at the top of a stoop, the curb is lined with parked cars, and a vehicle can only stop in the travel lane for as long as it takes to load.

So a brownstone pickup is about timing more than waiting. The chauffeur messages on the approach, pulls up when you are at the door, and takes the suitcases down the steps. For a family with a lot of luggage we suggest an Escalade or a Sprinter, which loads faster and keeps everyone together.

Teams, game nights and the waterfront

Brooklyn's group travel comes from three places. Its offices send teams across the river or to a client: a 14-passenger Sprinter for a department, or the 14-seat conference-table version when the meeting starts in the van. Barclays Center, at Atlantic and Flatbush avenues, draws company groups and clients on game nights, usually in a mini bus. And the waterfront's event spaces, from the Navy Yard to Industry City in Sunset Park and Brooklyn Bridge Park, host company outings that need a coach or several vehicles on one booking.

The group fleet is sized for that: Sprinter vans for up to 14, mini buses seating 23, 29, 32 and 38, a 40-passenger charter bus and a 55-passenger motor coach. A group larger than the biggest coach travels in more than one vehicle, arriving together, with one dispatcher for the day.

Big vehicles also need a different route. The Belt Parkway is closed to buses and commercial vehicles, and the Brooklyn Bridge does not take them either, so a mini bus or coach runs the Brooklyn-Queens and Gowanus expressways, Atlantic Avenue or the Manhattan Bridge. Its loading point is agreed with the organizer before the day, because a coach cannot stop on a brownstone block.

Bridges, the BQE and the airports

Three free bridges link Brooklyn to Manhattan — the Brooklyn, the Manhattan and the Williamsburg — along with the tolled Hugh L. Carey Tunnel from Red Hook to the Battery. The Brooklyn-Queens Expressway runs the length of the western waterfront and joins the Gowanus Expressway toward the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, Staten Island and New Jersey.

The airports are reachable but not next door. JFK is typically 30 to 45 minutes from Downtown Brooklyn by the Belt Parkway or Atlantic Avenue, and LaGuardia 30 to 50 minutes up the BQE, longer when the expressway is slow. A Brooklyn pickup is also outside Manhattan's congestion relief zone; the charge only enters the picture when a trip ends inside it, and we confirm that at booking.