Routes
Four journeys account for most of what a black car in this region actually does. For each, this page gives the distance, the times by hour of the day, the places it goes wrong, and the point at which you would be better off on a train.
Distance, drive time by time of day, the pinch points, what it costs at the Manhattan end — and when to book something other than us.
The four
Nassau County to JFK
18–25 miles, 30–40 minutes off-peak and up to 80 on a bad afternoon. The home route: it starts in the county the base sits in.
Manhattan to JFK
17–19 miles and anywhere from 45 to 90 minutes. The Van Wyck, the three congestion charges, and the case for the AirTrain.
NYC to the Hamptons
90–115 miles. Two hours in March, four to six on a summer Friday afternoon, and one road east of the Shinnecock Canal that nothing can route around.
Greenwich CT to Manhattan
~30 miles. Forty minutes at six in the morning, two hours at nine — against a Metro-North express that does it in 41 either way.
Side by side
What these figures assume
Common questions
Can I book a route not listed here?
Yes — these four are simply the corridors that carry most black car work in this region. Anything within our service areas is a normal booking, and anything beyond them is long-distance work.
Is the fare fixed for these routes?
A trip is quoted as a flat rate for airport transportation and set destinations, or an hourly rate when the car is at your disposal. Our position on dynamic or surge pricing: Surge pricing is when a ride's price jumps with demand — during rush hour or bad weather — after you've already committed to the trip. We never charge surge prices. The price you're quoted is the price you pay, with no fuel surcharge added either.
Can I tell you about something on the road that day?
Please do. A school run, a street fair, a closure at your end, a building entrance that only works from one side — say it at booking and it goes on the job. The driving is ours to plan; the local detail at your address is usually yours to know.
What happens if the traffic goes badly wrong?
You get told while it is happening rather than afterwards. On airport work that is the whole point of tracking the flight and planning from the bag-drop cut-off — the slack is built in before departure, not improvised at the Van Wyck.
Do you charge for traffic?
That follows from what the quote is built from: a flat rate for airport transportation and set destinations, or an hourly rate when the car is at your disposal. Where a trip is quoted as a flat rate, traffic does not move the number — which is the reason to ask for one on a corridor with a long tail. On hourly hire the clock is the product, so time in traffic is time booked, and overrun is billed rounded up to the next full hour.
TRI-STATE AREA
