Next wave of popular green cabs hits TLC snag

Green cabs are about to hit a yellow light.

The new chair of the Taxi and Limousine Commission on Thursday said she couldn’t guarantee that the next batch of 6,000 green taxi permits would be issued at any point in 2014, as previously planned.

After providing budget testimony at a City Council hearing, TLC chair Meera Joshi told reporters the new permits would not be ready for release by June 12 – the date the agency is legally allowed to begin issuing them.

She said it’s because the agency needs to engage with passengers, drivers, community boards and the taxi industry before moving forward with the program.

“We’re not going to commit to a certain date until we finish the process to a point that we feel comfortable,” Joshi said when asked why the agency can’t guarantee the new permits for 2014.

“This is a city with many moving parts. I am one part, one agency. And I think that decisions are made not in a vacuum.”

The first batch of permits for 6,000 green cabs, which have been a hit with public-transportation starved residents in the outer boroughs, were issued by ex-Mayor Bloomberg last year.

Additional batches of 6,000 so-called street hail cabs were slated to hit the road in each of 2014 and 2015.

Despite being an outer-borough booster, Mayor de Blasio has been critical of the roll-out of the green taxis, a position supporters link to the more than $350,000 in campaign funding he got from yellow taxi interests during his run for City Hall last year.

The green cabs can only pick up hails in the outer boroughs and largely above 96th street in Manhattan, while yellow cabs mostly serve Manhattan and the city airports.

Oddly, Joshi didn’t even mention green taxis in her testimony on the TLC’s $63 million fiscal 2015 budget – which caught the attention of council Transportation Committee Chairman Ydanis Rodriguez (D-Manhattan).

“Why in your testimony is there nothing related to the street hails?” he asked.

“I anticipated you would ask me that question, so I’m going to let you ask the question – I’m happy to answer,” Joshi responded.

She later told reporters that feedback from stakeholders would likely alter the program in some way, though she didn’t specify how.

“What’s definite is that the program moves forward,” she said. “Figuring out the structure of how it moves forward is what we’re going to get over the next process of engagement.”