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The environmental friendliness of the city’s new taxi fleet is fueling a fight between the City Council and Mayor Bloomberg’s administration.
The sleek new Taxi of Tomorrow cab — which the city Taxi and Limousine Commission will require all cab owners to buy when their leases run out — will end up drastically reducing the number of fuel-efficient hybrids in the fleet, two council members claim.
“The City Council and the Bloomberg administration have made reducing our city’s carbon footprint — and minimizing harmful pollutants — a top priority. Yet you stand on the verge of reducing the number of green taxis on our streets by over 90 percent,” council Speaker Christine Quinn and Transportation Committee Chairman James Vacca wrote in a letter to TLC Chairman David Yassky, a former council colleague.
Currently taxi fleet owners can elect to operate hybrids — and more than 5,000 do — but the new Nissan taxi that the TLC will formally vote on later this month is not a hybrid. Since the Nissan will be mandated, nearly all drivers will have to switch to a nonhybrid vehicle. Separately, the TLC will continue requiring 273 drivers to operate hybrids.
Ironically, the TLC and Bloomberg tried to force all cabdrivers to switch to hybrids, but were blocked in court by the cab owners, who fill council members’ coffers with campaign cash.
Yassky replied by emphasizing that the new fleet is “the most fuel-efficient choice among all the vehicles proposed during the Taxi of Tomorrow competition.”