Ask 50 cabbies what they would rather drive, hybrid or Crown Victoria, and at least 20 if not more, will tell you they'd prefer less gas consumption. I say once we go green, we'll never go back, I know it's not quite so catchy but it's the truth.
The Metropolitan Taxi Board of Trade just won a preliminary injunction against Mayor Bloomberg's green taxi agenda. What really rubs me the wrong way, is that we cabbies have been mis-represented. The MTBOT doesn't represent all New York taxi drivers. Quite the contrary, it mostly represents taxi owners, most of whom lease their cabs to drivers and thus do not have to pay for gas themselves. The reason the judge halted the green taxi fleet plan was not because of safety issues, or durability concerns. Rather, the judge halted further greening of our taxis because only federal government and not local government, has "the right to set fuel efficiency standards."-NYTimes
To further prove my point I encourage you, the reader to survey 50 cabbies who already drive hybrids as taxis, if 90% don't say they are glad they made the switch, well, I'll be surprised.
So, you're either sick of your Crown Victoria's appetite for gas, or you're irritated by the loss of space in your new compact economy car. Am I right?
Did you know, that the Ford Crown Victoria taxis of NYC have 9 inches more length than the standard model Crown Vic? Why can't we get a little stretch in our compacts? By the way, that stretchy freak Prius still gets 50 miles to the gallon. What! I still can't get 15 mpgs on my best days.
A taxicab cannot just be painted yellow, get the taxi stickers and be on the streets. New cars first have to be suggested to the Taxi and Limousine Commission, then the TLC can decide to put vehicles through a probationary period, or not. During such a period, courageous drivers can decide to purchase the vehicles that are pending acceptance. The TLC then keeps a closer eye on the trial vehicles seeing if they can hold up to the stop and go, the potholes, the demons, and the tight twisty lanes of our so called expressways. Within three years or so it is decided whether these vehicles are worthy.
Drivers and passengers alike can agree on what makes a good taxi. The TLC has a list .
The LTI Taxi, famous as a London cab, even did a stint in our city. For some reason, I don't think it was approved. I don't ever see it anymore.
The LTI meets our growing need for a car with lots of passenger room with easy accessibility. One of the key qualifications for a taxi in London is to have a tight turning radius. The LTI, I could imagine, can turn in a tighter circle than any cab in New York, and possibly all of America. According to their own website, the new LTI gets 25.5 MPG in the city with an automatic, so I assume that translates to 20 mpg in NYC, not particularly special but still better than our Ford Crown Victoria. Also LTI's have a wheelchair access ramp that the driver can slide out from the passenger door to the curb. This one and only New York LTI cab was spotted circa 2005
The Mercedes-Benz E300 D is another extremely popular international taxi from what I've heard from friends who've been to Greece and Israel. Yeah we tried that one too, beats me why it didn't cut whatever is in our mustard. It was rumored that the one driver who owned it, only drove in midtown and would refuse all longer rides. I saw the Mercedes once; the dude was chillen' with his windows down and the sunroof open smoking a cigar. The car had no partition between the driver and passenger, which is a choice drivers can opt for if they purchase a camera that takes a picture of each passenger, however, if the taxicab was considered too small, the TLC might have mandated the camera instead of the partition. RayNYC, who found the image, did his research, and according to the TLC there were just two in operation. He also told me the driver told him the car was twice the price of the Crown Victoria, but gas was half the price. I saw the Mercedes E class taxi circa 1998.
Around the same time the two Mercedes' were on the road, two Lincoln Town Cars were being driven with taxi medallions too. Just like the Mercedes pictured above, they didn't seem to get the right hue of yellow paint as the rest of the taxis. The Town Car was doing extremely well in sales at this time, grabbing almost a strangle hold on the American limo market maintaining a large enough size to satisfy the clientele. A key feature was the air suspension which came in handy on the city streets, evening out almost all the bumps on the road to a smooth gentle ride.
Basically The Town car is a very glorified Ford Crown Victoria,and so for double the price, it wasn't worth using as a taxicab in my opinion, but there are differences such asthe air suspension. Today both the Lincoln Town Cars and the Ford Crown Victorias hold respectively overpowering leads in the limousine and taxicab markets. It is their easy and cheap maintenance and reliability, plus their size, and their comfortable ride which give these cars their dominance in these markets. The Town Car outnumbers all other luxury cars by a huge margin in New York City. This market dominance grabbed hold in the early 90's when Lincoln's maintained a constant large size over the Cadilac which changed sizes of their cars from year to year, and Lincoln held the market with their good reliability. However the Town Car wasn't approved.
was promised to drive 150 miles between charges and have a maximum speed of 80 miles per hour. Negatively it would take 6 hours to recharge and it would cost between 50 and 75 thousand dollars, however it was predicted to save a driver up to 15 thousand a year.
At the time it seemed almost as likely for this car to work as it did for the Ford Escape Hybrid. Retrospectively, the PT Cruiser was a laugher. This crack team of professionals who had bragging rights of working with government and (?) NASA contracts for electric vehicles, couldn't make a car capable for the job. It couldn't handle the cold weather for one. Secondly, only once did the Cruiser cruise for 90 miles, usually it only traveled 40 in a day, the rest of the time it was being towed. The average mileage I travel in my shift is between 100 and 200 miles, usually somewhere just under 150. This PT Cruiser must have been a hallucination, 'cause I never seen it.
Brainstorming in 2007
It was only so many months ago, but it was the beginning of an attempt at a renaissance in taxi awareness. With hybrid technology making Ford Crown Victrorias look pathetic besides its impending end of production, the New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission had to take visible steps towards a new industry standard taxicab. 2007 marked the 100th year of the taxi cab in New York, and so it was time to shake things up. The NYC taxi was realized as an icon of the city, and so they began to work with a design team to create ideas for a taxi with greater passenger access, more user friendly credit card machines, and a logo that would give the taxi a brand identity, something easy to recognize and understand like any good corporate logo.
I have been practicing with some other cabbies on a GPS computer display model in the garage. The Dispatcher takes us through the basics and quickly takes us into circumstances we don't anticipate. such as this:
If the passenger were to pay in cash, the driver would first hit 'time off' on the meter, followed by the 'print' button, to combine the extra charges and accumulated units and initial charge as usual. But if the passenger then decides to pay with a credit card after first saying they were paying cash, the driver must go through the computer, click 'refuse payment', then set a flat fare of the same amount just cancelled, hit 'time off', and let the passenger choose 'pay with credit card' accept the charge, select a tip, then swipe their card. But, then what if the passenger pays with their card, then changes their mind once more and decides to pay cash? The the driver must select 'cancel C.C. transaction', enter the flat fare again and 'time off', and 'print.'
I suppose if something like this really happened, it would be laughable, and a little degrading.
GPS and the taxi meter:
Here are the differences between GPS taxis and taxis without GPS:
Without GPS, the meter has only hiring rates 1 and 2:
A regular New York City fare
A flat fare from Manhattan to JFK or vise versa ($45 plus tolls)
With the GPS, we can put rates 3 through 5 onto the meter:
Rate 3 is a Newark Airport fare. Typical rate 1 initial charges are engaged, plus a 15 dollar charge for our time spent in New Jersey. The meter shows 17.50, and rolls on for each additional unit (mileage and waiting time) driven, the toll needs to be added. All told, a Newark Airport ride totals to 60 bucks.
Rate 4 is double the meter. Rate 4 should be initialized if the passenger is going to a destination near the city, but not in the city, and yet still in New York state. But the meter should only be doubled once the city border is crossed. I am still unsure if the GPS automatically doubles proceeding units on the meter once the border is crossed, or if the 4th rate needs to be pressed precisely at borderline.
Rate 5 is simple, a flat fare agreed upon by both the driver and passenger. It is entered into the computer, and after agreed on by the passenger via the touch screen, it appears on the meter. A flat fare other than 45 dollars is suitable for rides Out of New York State, or for a far enough distance from New York City.
In taxis without GPS installed Rates 3 through 5 are (and were previously) done in addition to, or without the meter. So the thinking now is that there will be less passenger confusion when they see everything on the meter and get easy to read credit card instructions on a monitor.
Plus, with the addition of GPS, we won't need to write down our pick-up and drop-off times and locations on trip sheets.
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