What is the optimal place to meet in NYC to begin a road trip? [closed]

Me and three friends are headed on a July 4th trip up to New England. I'm doing the trip planning and procuring a vehicle, so I need to figure out where all of us should meet. It's quite a drive, so we need to leave early; the problem is that we live scattered around the 5 boroughs, so it wouldn't be fair to just ask them to meet me at my place (some of them would inevitably have to be up even earlier for a ridiculously long a.m. commute to reach my place on time).

• I live in Queens, close to the Bronx-Whitestone bridge (making for easy passage out of the city)
• another lives in Brooklyn
• another lives in Staten Island
• another lives smack in the middle of Midtown Manhattan

My Vice Trip Planner suggests that we simply meet in Hell's Kitchen, as it is a central location. While I dislike the idea of driving in Manhattan, traffic shouldn't be too bad early morning on a holiday weekend. Or if I forced them to meet at my place anyways, that means a quick exit from the city so we can get to our destination faster. Given the info above, is there perhaps a better place that we could all rendezvous to begin our trip, or is somewhere in Midtown the best we can do?