Could this be the taxi of tomorrow? (Via Human Condition/ToT)
Once upon a time, the Ford Crown Victoria, painted yellow, dominated the streets of New York City. These gas-guzzling behemoths were the darling of the Taxi & Limousine Commission. With spacious trunks and ample space in the back, the Crown Vic proved popular with drivers and passengers alike, and even today, the familiar body, largely unchanged since 1979, still rolls around the city.
In the mid-2000s, though, the character of the taxi fleet began to change. As part of an effort to reduce carbon emissions while modernizing the fleet, the Taxi & Limousine Commission began urging and then requiring the adoption of hybrid taxis. For model year 2006, for instance, the TLC approved the Ford Escape/Mercury Mariner, the Honda Accord, the Honda Civic, the Lexus RX400H, the Toyota Highlander and the Toyota Prius for use among cabbies, and since then, the number of different taxicab makes and models has grown to 16.
The hybrid push was part of a larger effort by Mayor Michael Bloomberg to bring PlaNYC to fruition, but the judiciary had other ideas. On a preemption basis, a judge blocked the hybrid cab requirement, and an appeals court has upheld the decision as well. Instead, the request to move to a hybrid remains voluntary. Still, the city is trying to improve the efficiency of its taxi fleet.
Enter the Taxi of Tomorrow. In late 2009, the TLC pulled out a request for proposal for the next-gen taxicab. As London has done with their iconic cars, so too will New York try to unify its fleet. The main requirements are eight fold:
- Highest safety standards
- Superior passenger experience
- Superior driver comfort and amenities
- Appropriate purchase price and on-going maintenance and repair costs
- Sustainability (minimized environmental impact throughout the vehicle’s life cycle)
- Minimal physical footprint (with more useable interior room)
- Universal accessibility for all users with a goal of meeting ADA guidelines (wheelchair accessible)
- Iconic design that will identify the new taxi with New York City
From an environmental standpoint, sustainability is the key requirement. The TLC should be able to make an endrun around the court’s preemption argument by unifying the fleet and special-ordering a new car. The finalists in the RFP competition will be announced early next year, and the new cars should hit the road by 2014 as part of a three-to-five year replacement effort.
Earlier this week at the Museum of the City of New York, the taxi industry presented some preliminary designs and discussed the impetus behind the project. I couldn’t attend this session, but WNYC’s Kathleen Horan did. She reports on the divergent opinions on the one-car project:
The President of the Metropolitan Taxi Cab Board of Trade, Ron Sherman, also worries that malfunctions could cause headaches if there isn’t more variety. “We feel that there should be at least 2 or 3 choices — that stakes are too high to rely on just one provider to accomplish this.”
Taxi and Limousine Commissioner David Yassky says the benefits of working with a single automaker are worth the risks. “Only the city government can act on behalf of the entire industry in getting the best deal possible from the manufacturers. I think that’s worth it.”
He says that no other city has ever tried this, but that the only way to meet all the goals is by being pro-active and not picking from what is already on the market.
Reinventing the wheel certainly carries with it substantial risk, and Sherman’s points are a valid one. If the TLC opts for a custom-made car, it’s going to need to ensure that New York mechanics have the expertise necessary to repair these cars when they inevitably break down. These cars will have to be affordable for the city and taxi medallion owners and will have to be both handicapped-accessible and environmentally friendly. How the city resolves this design debate will have an impact well into the next decade.
18 comments
Reminds me of the Johnny Cab from “Total Recall”. Now they just need the robot driver.
So I take it we’re not getting the Checker cab and its jump seats back anytime soon?
If that’s what the new taxis are going to look like, they’re pretty ugly.
Wouldn’t it be possible to just retrofit the Crown Victorias or order modified ones? That way we could still have an icon without ordering expensive, custom-built cars.
What does it matter anyway? Who is going to afford to ride a taxi in ten years? Only the super rich. The discount airport rate will be $100.
That’s no change from how it’s been for the last 10-15 years. Only the upper middle class and higher can afford taxis today, and even then, that’s only over a shorter distance.
Yet, people still take a lot of taxis. There are still 13,000+ medallioned taxis out there. So it matters because of the environmental impact these cars have on the city and the economic impact — via their fare structure and congestion-causing traits.
That’s an oversimplification. Only the upper middle class and higher can afford to take taxis frequently, but most New Yorkers can afford an occasional ride.
As for congestion – on a per capita basis, a taxi ride definitely causes more congestion than a subway ride, but is also causes less congestion than a drive in a private car.
Excellent reply to BrooklynBus.
At night, taxis are the dominant type of car on many Manhattan avenues. One side effect of getting hybrids is lower noise emissions.
I’m sure you realize this, but I’m with Andrew. Taxis aren’t common transportation for most people, but I’d venture to say nearly everyone in NYC takes a cab occasionally. Sometimes, due to carrying things that aren’t easy to haul onto a train, overnight hour (slow subway and nearly empty major arteries), subway outages, weather, short trips that are far easier by cab than by train, all sorts of reasons – everyone does at one point or another.
Of course you are correct. My comment is from the point of view of a potential user, not from an environmental point of view.
One of the reasons why car ownership is higher than it needs to be in dense areas and why some people rely on taxis is because they can’t or won’t use mass transit and car rental rates are prohibitive in the NYC area.
We would need fewer taxis if programs like zip car were more popular and car rental rates were reasonable as in Florida. Under those circumstances Manhattanites who only use their car infrequently like to go to the Hamptons wouldn’t need one at all.
I think car rentals and taxis serve basically distinct markets. Rentals are good for day trips out of town and for transporting large quantities of stuff over the course of several hours or a day. They aren’t so good for simply getting from one point in the city to another.
I could be wrong, but I assume car rental rates are high here in large part because because land is expensive (and parked cars occupy a lot of land).
There is, also, a certain lack of competitiveness in the car rental market that a market like New York isn’t really conducive to breaking.
My point about car rentals wasn’t that they compete with taxis. They don’t. I merely said that if they were more affordable, car ownership for people who don’t need them on a daily basis would be lower.
I was trying to say if more people knew about zip car and how it worked, that may be a feasible alternative to taxis in some areas. Due to the lack of parking, it may not be feasible for Manhattan. I think it is mainly used to access commuter rail stations preventing the need for a second car.
For a large taxi fleet, designing a custom car should not be a cost increaser. When you’re a very large buyer you have the luxury of ordering something other than commercial off-the-shelf, and have vendors accommodate you. If your engineers are competent, or if they know how to run competitive bids for outside design, then this can actually decrease costs, by picking all and only the features needed (see e.g. London cabs’ immense passenger space). For example, NYCT sticks to its own train designs, and the Paris Metro insists on rubber-tired trains on its busiest lines; both have low rolling stock costs by global standards.
To be an appropriate local icon, it would be covered in trash, twice as tall as surrounding traffic and squeal louder than the 4 rounding the corner at union square. With subwoofers.
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Not sure if many have mentioned this… but if the new design, whichever one is selected, is definitely a sliding door rather than a hinge… it could reducing cyclist dooring citywide, no?
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