In NYC, Yellow Cabs Turn Green

By 2012, city’s entire fleet will be hybrid

What happens in Vegas may stay in Vegas, but if New York City has its way, what happens there will spread across the country and around the world.

At least that’s what Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office is saying about the city’s decision to switch its entire taxi fleet to hybrid cars by 2012.

“Just like other cities followed suit with a smoking ban, we’d like others to see that an all-hybrid taxi fleet is possible,” says Jason Post, a spokesperson for Bloomberg. “Before it was done in New York, maybe people didn’t realize a smoking ban could be done. Now you see smoking bans in places you wouldn’t have expected: Ireland, London.”

As part of Bloomberg’s comprehensive sustainability plan, known as PlaNYC, all new taxis entering NYC’s fleet after Oct. 1, 2008, will have to achieve a city-rated 25 miles per gallon minimum. A year later, that figure will jump to 30 miles per gallon.

Right now, the Ford Crown Victoria, which Taxi and Limousine Commission spokesman Allan Fromberg calls the “workhorse of the industry,” averages just 12-14 mpg.

“They’re not known for great fuel efficiency,” he says.

Because New York taxicabs operate under a mandatory retirement cycle of between 3-5 years, the new fuel efficiency rules effectively mean that by early 2012, New York’s entire fleet of yellow cabs–which today number 13,237—will have turned green. Bloomberg says the switch will remove the equivalent of 32,000 individually owned gas powered vehicles from NYC streets.

New York isn’t necessarily the first city to decide to go hybrid—San Francisco claims to have made that call earlier. But New York’s fleet is nearly ten times the size of San Francisco’s.

“It will be the cleanest, largest fleet of taxis anywhere on the planet,” Bloomberg says.

Fromberg stresses the benefits to drivers. “For the driver and owners, clearly the benefit is a good-quality, safe vehicle that is saving them 50 percent on their fuel costs.”

Ford, Nissan and General Motors have all agreed to manufacture an increased number of hybrid cars each month specifically for New York’s fleet. Fromberg says drivers are fighting to get the cars as they become available.

And that’s not only because of savings on fuel, he says. Indeed, some of the hybrids are less expensive to buy than the Crown Victoria.

The Toyota Prius, for example, costs about $6,000 less than a Crown Victoria, Fromberg says. And while the Ford Escape is a few thousand dollars more expensive, he notes that “These are costs that are quickly made up by the savings in fuel.”

“For them,” Fromberg adds, “it’s as much about the green in their pocket as the green in the environment.”

When the idea first started gaining currency in New York, some spoke out against it, concerned that maintenance costs would be high, passenger leg-room low, and that the cars’ batteries were unlikely to last for the life of the car.

But New York already has 1,370 hybrid cabs on the road, and Fromberg says none of these problems has come to pass. Passengers, he said, have “voted with their feet,” and he hasn’t heard of “a single battery needing to be replaced in the hybrids.”

“We have just about every kind of commercially available hybrid vehicle on the road as taxicabs,” he says. “In general, they have performed admirably in terms of holding up to the New York streets and doing duty as New York City taxicabs, which is no easy feat.”

“Hybrids collectively have passed their initial inspections with us at a rate of about 85 percent, whereas other vehicles have averaged anywhere between 50-54 percent,” Fromberg adds.

The switch to Hybrids, he says, is good for everybody: “It appears to have been a win-win.”

If only the odds in Vegas were so good.

Photo Credit: Michael Danser (Wikimedia)