Bob Staake

Amid the cacophony that is Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, there is one sound that at times stands out above the din.

Beep beep! Beep beep! Beep beep beep!

It's the staccato of a dollar van before the driver, with something like a sixth sense, spots a rider.

The doors slide open and a man and his young son squeeze in. A nurse gets out, sliding her $2 to the driver. (The dollar vans, contrary to their name, actually charge double that. Go figure). Reggae music blares and off we go.

Every day, dollar vans barrel along Flatbush from downtown Brooklyn. Past Atlantic Terminal, on to Grand Army Plaza, through Park Slope and Prospect Park, they head into the heart of Caribbean Brooklyn, all the way to Kings Plaza mall.

Nearly all on Flatbush are run by Caribbean operators and ridden by people from the Caribbean. Such commuter vans are not limited to Brooklyn: A large network operates out of Jamaica, for example, and vans shuttle residents and employees between the city's three largest Chinatowns.

While there are hundreds of legal commuter vans that ply their trade in the city every day, it has been estimated that there are an equal or greater number of illegal ones.

The Flatbush vans in particular have long sparked complaints about noise, safety and legality.

Just last week, a pedestrian on Flatbush near Hawthorne was hit by a van and killed, according to police. Witnesses told multiple media outlets that it happened because two dollar van drivers were racing each other. The van that caused the fatality was believed to be operating as a livery illegally.

According to Allan Fromberg, a spokesman for the city's Taxi and Limousine Commission, joint operations with police have resulted in 516 summonses being issued to unlicensed vans so far this year, and about 200 vans have been seized. He said on Thursday that TLC officials were involved in enforcement with police in two Brooklyn precincts, and they expect to step up the pressure in light of last week's fatal accident.

There's plenty of unlicensed vans for them to find.

The van I rode from Kings County to Atlantic Terminal this week was clearly illegal. There was no business name inside or out; no livery or bus plates on the van; and no stickers on the front dashboard.

I picked it up near Kings Plaza mall, on Avenue U, where the hustle begins. Touts call out to passersby.

"Grand Army?" they asked, directing me to one van; another is there for those going up Utica Avenue.

The driver of the first van I get into yells at the driver of another van backing into it. Tempers flare. I quickly decide this isn't the van for me. Twenty minutes later, those vans are gone; three more are standing in their wake.

We head up Flatbush. A couple-dozen people filter in and out, and in less than 30 minutes we're at Atlantic Terminal. Mission complete, my life intact.

No one is more upset about the illegal vans than the ones who do it right. These guys shell out significant amounts of money, only to see their business being edged out by a bunch of rogue operators.

Winston Williams, the 51-year-old operator of Blackstreet Van Lines in Brooklyn, says he pays upward of $9,000 for each of his nine vans.

The Jamaica native counts off the illegal vans as he drives by them. He said he even gives the TLC the license plate numbers of illegal vans about once a year, aiming for increased enforcement.

"Illegal, illegal, illegal," he says. "A lot of these drivers are young kids, driving vehicles with no insurance, with no valid licenses," he says. "They continue to multiply and there's no enforcement."

He points out one with a Pennsylvania tag. "That is another illegal," he says, giving the driver a dirty look.

Mr. Williams, like other longtime operators, is frustrated by rules that he says force everyone to flout the law. Commuter vans are not supposed to pick up street hails or people from bus stops, but both are regularly done. It's the only way to get passengers, he says.

David King, an assistant professor of Urban Planning at Columbia University, has been studying dollar vans for a couple of years. He estimated that there are 300 legal vans and 400 to 500 illegal ones in the city. Mr. King estimates that 100,000 to 120,000 riders a day take the vans in Queens and Brooklyn, which would make it the 20th largest bus system in the country.

"They're an important part of the transit system, and it's not exactly clear where they're a complement to it or where they're a substitute," he added. "Why aren't the people relying on the vans using conventional MTA service? What is it that is not being served?"

The curious part is that while dollar vans sometimes serve communities where public transit routes don't exist—like the routes between Chinatowns—in other cases, like on Flatbush, they exist side-by-side with MTA buses. And while when they were just $1 there was a significant cost difference, when they raised prices to $2, the difference became somewhat negligible.

So why do people take them?

"It's faster and you get a seat all the time," says Juan Perez, 33, who says the trip from his Bedford-Stuyvesant home to Kings Plaza would take more than an hour and a transfer if he took the bus. On the dollar van, it's 30 minutes.

He says he only rides the legal ones, but most riders say they can't tell the difference.

A Haitian resident of Canarsie named Lesly says he takes dollar vans every day. Today, he's in Mr. Williams's legal van.

But he acknowledges that he knows "most of them are illegal."

Does it bother him? "Kind of," he says. "But it's faster."