Yellow Cabs Going Green

Mayor Bloomberg announced that the entire fleet of yellow taxicabs will go hybrid by 2012 and that new mileage restrictions will require a minimum of 25 mpg.

The city's yellow taxi fleet will go entirely hybrid within five years, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Tuesday.

''There's an awful lot of taxicabs on the streets of New York City,'' Bloomberg said. ''These cars just sit there in traffic sometimes, belching fumes.

''This does a lot less. It's a lot better for all of us,'' he said of the hybrid plan.

Nearly 400 fuel-efficient hybrids have been tested in the city's taxi fleet over the past 18 months, with models including the Toyota Prius, the Toyota Highlander Hybrid, the Lexus RX 400h and the Ford Escape.

Under Bloomberg's plan, that number will increase to 1,000 by October 2008, then will grow by about 20 percent each year until 2012, when every yellow cab -- currently numbering 13,000 -- will be a hybrid.

Hybrid vehicles run on a combination of gasoline and electricity, emitting less exhaust and achieving higher gas mileage per gallon.

The standard yellow cab vehicle, the Ford Crown Victoria, gets 14 miles per gallon. In contrast, the Ford Escape taxis get 36 miles per gallon.

There are serious merits to shifting the fleet to hybrid vehicles considering that cabs make up an important part of the daily traffic and transportation system and this is a good idea worth exploring. Reducing emissions from that part of the daily traffic would have significant merit.

The problem is that the costs associated with the change to the hybrid fleet would fall not on the city but on private companies who obtain the licenses to operate the cabs from the city. There is the higher up front costs of purchasing the hybrid vehicles and the costs make sense only when the price of gasoline remains high. Cabbies who usually lease the cabs from the companies wont necessarily complain about the hybrids because that means they'd be able to retain a higher percentage of their fares, though they too may see higher leasing costs to offset the initial purchases.

There's also a question about the daily pounding that cabs take on city streets. They have to put on thousands of miles a week, and the hybrids are far more complicated than the conventionally powered Crown Vics they replace. Some of the hybrids, like the Prius, are also smaller than the Crown Vics, which is an ongoing issue for those who transport customers to and from airports.

Consider the fact that the NYC Transit Authority is having problems with their hybrid buses. The buses keep breaking down and no one seems to know what the solution is.

NYC Transit's fleet of more than 600 Orion VII buses have repeatedly suffered power-generator breakdowns.

Manufacturer Orion Bus Industries hasn't fixed the problem, according to MTA documents, so the agency plans spend $200,000 on a consultant to find a solution.

The Transit Authority may be able to deal with having 600 buses that don't work properly, but a company that owns a handful of cabs wouldn't be able to afford the loss of cabs for extended periods of time because they keep breaking down.

These are issues that need to be overcome in order to reduce emissions. Even if you don't agree with the idea of anthrogenic global warming, reducing emissions makes sense since there is less particulate emissions that contributes to high rates of asthma and other respiratory ailments.

Once the kinks are worked out of the system, this will definitely improve the air quality in the city.

UPDATE:
The Empire Blog notes many of the same issues I mentioned above. However, why stop with the taxis? What about the rest of the vehicles in the NYC government fleet? We have already seen that buses have had teething issues, but what about the agency cars?

UPDATE:
Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Perri Nelson's Website, The Random Yak, DeMediacratic Nation, Adam's Blog, Big Dog's Weblog, Webloggin, Pursuing Holiness, Diary of the Mad Pigeon, Rightlinx, Right Celebrity, third world county, Wake Up America, Alabama Improper, stikNstein... has no mercy, Pirate's Cove, Planck's Constant, CORSARI D'ITALIA, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.