Judge Blocks Bloomberg's Hybrid Taxi Plan

This shouldn't really come as a surprise. Mayor Mike Bloomberg proposed his hybrid taxi plan as an unfunded mandate on taxi owners to switch to hybrid vehicles even though there are insufficient numbers of taxis that qualify for taxi use while maintaining current comfort levels for customers.

More to the point, the Mayor's plan was preempted by federal law that sets fuel economy standards nationwide.

In 2003, the city authorized the taxi commission to sell additional medallions — the valuable licenses that are the exclusive right to operate a cab — provided that at least 9 percent of the new medallions went to hybrids or to cars powered by compressed natural gas.

Over the next two years, the commission failed to approve any hybrids for use as taxis, saying that the existing models did not have sufficient interior room and did not meet other city guidelines. In 2005, the commission began approving hybrid models for use as taxis; there are now 10 types of hybrid and clean-diesel vehicles approved for use as city cabs.

But it was not until last year that the Bloomberg administration fully embraced the hybrids. Mr. Bloomberg announced his broad PlaNYC 2030 program on April 22, 2007. A month later, on May 22, 2007, he announced that the taxicab fleet would become fully hybrid by 2012.

The hybrid-taxi rule has been bitterly fought by taxi owners. Earlier this year, Ron Sherman, president of the Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade, said in a statement that “small, light passenger hybrids should not be used as New York City taxicabs, which clock upwards of 100,000 miles a year each and often run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.” He argued that the Taxi and Limousine Commission “has ignored the laws of physics, which dictates that the larger the vehicle’s interior space, the safer the vehicle’s occupants are in an accident.”

The other plaintiffs were the Midtown Operating Corporation, a garage that leases taxis to more than 800 independent contractors on a double-shifted daily basis; the Sweet Irene Transportation Company, which owns and leases taxis; Ossman Ali of the Bronx, a self-employed independent contractor who leases and drives taxis; and Kevin Healy of Roslyn Heights, N.Y., a frequent taxi passenger.

Judge Crotty said the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their argument that fuel economy standards were delegated to federal agencies under the Energy Policy and Conservation Act, but he said he did not agree with their argument that the city was trying to improperly regulate tailpipe emissions and supplant the federal role in enforcing the Clean Air Act.

I think Crotty is wrong on that latter point, since Bloomberg was pointing out that he was looking to reduce tailpipe emissions as part of his clean air initiatives for New York City.

I've suggested in the past that if Bloomberg wants to impose hybrid vehicles on the city, he should start with the MTA buses and other city-owned vehicles, rather than the unfunded mandate to force drivers of taxis to buy hybrid vehicles.