Jitney Jilts Manhattan's West Side, as Brooklyn Gets Its Own Pickup

As New Yorkers scramble to nail down the last remaining Hamptons summer shares over the next few weeks, many Upper West Side residents who will soon be escaping to the beach say they feel overlooked by Hampton Jitney, which stops only on the Upper East Side and will expand its service to Brooklyn this summer.

"It's just really surprising that they'd do a route in Brooklyn first," a psychoanalyst who works on the Upper West Side and sometimes visits friends at their weekend homes in the Hamptons, Judy Bernes, said.

Jacqueline Jankoff, a bubbly, curly-haired Upper West Side resident, stocks up on groceries at Zabar's every Friday during the summer before catching the 86th Street crosstown bus to Lexington Avenue, where she boards the Jitney and relaxes in the roomy bus on the way to her Amagansett beach house. After 18 years of this weekend routine, Ms. Jankoff says she could make the crosstown trip with her eyes closed, but that doesn't lighten her grocery load.

"I come here, and then I have to schlep my shopping bags across town on the bus," Ms. Jankoff said over a sample of goat cheese at Zabar's. "I love the Jitney, but I wish it came here."

Hampton Jitney, which has been driving New Yorkers to the East End of Long Island from the Upper East Side since 1974, announced earlier this week that it will pick up passengers from Park Slope and downtown Brooklyn beginning on Memorial Day. The same fleet of forest green coaches that now services the Upper East Side will be used in Brooklyn, a company spokeswoman said.

The Brooklyn borough president, Marty Markowitz, who has been an aggressive lobbyist for Jitney pickups in his borough, offered no apologies to Upper West Side residents who are envious of Brooklyn's newest bus service.

"We have the hip zip," he said. "No disrespect to the Upper West Side, but Brooklyn is always hipper. If Shelter Island is not half Brooklyn, I'd be surprised."

Mr. Markowitz also pointed out that taking a bus or a taxi across town to a Jitney stop is hardly a backbreaking inconvenience.

The chairman of the real estate firm Prudential Douglas Elliman, Faith Consolo, said she thinks the Jitney is making a mistake by not servicing the Upper West Side. "Most of their business is on the East Side, but the West Side has kind of been ignored," she said. With new developments and more young professionals moving to the Upper West Side, the neighborhood is becoming more attractive to people who likely would take the bus to the Hamptons if it were a convenient option, she said.

Real estate along Central Park South and Broadway has traditionally been owned by nonresidents who used the properties as pieds-à-terre, Ms. Consolo said. "That's changed over the past few years, and an area once ignored by the Jitney will need to be recognized," she said.

While the bus company has fielded requests over the years to expand its service to the Upper West Side, the vice president of Hampton Jitney, Andrew Lynch, said it currently has no plans to add any additional Manhattan pickup locations. Brooklyn's call for Hamptons-bound bus service, however, reached a fever pitch in the past few years, Mr. Lynch said, so the company responded.

The new pickup locations, currently planned for Fourth Avenue, 9th Street, and Union Street in Park Slope, as well as a stop in downtown Brooklyn, also are expected to attract a Hamptons-bound crowd from Lower Manhattan's Financial District.

Until this summer, the Jitney has shuttled about 500,000 passengers annually to the Hamptons from stops at 86th, 69th, 59th, and 40th streets along Lexington Avenue. The bus line offers only drop-off service on the Upper West Side.

Mr. Markowitz, who plans to spend his summer in Brooklyn, said he will reap secondhand rewards from the new Jitney service. "I live in Park Slope," he said. "It'll finally be a pleasure to park!"