Early yesterday morning, as I dressed to head out for the day, I turned on NY1 to catch the weather. The lead story of course was about the MTA and how officials in Albany were floating a plan to institute a $0.50 taxi surcharge as a way of driving money to the transit agency.

This plan has gotten varying degrees to treatment in the press. A report on WNYC made it seem as though it was just another half-baked idea a few State Senators were tossing around. A more recent report on NY1 from last night made it sound as though it were a real proposal under consideration and one the Senate might actually support.

That’s neither here nor there though. My biggest issue with the NY1 report was a statement from Bhairavi Desai, the head of the Taxi Workers Alliance. Now, the TWA is a great organization. It’s a union of 3000 taxi drivers, and Desai has been instrumental in earning better working conditions and higher pay for drivers. She clearly knows nothing about the MTA though.

“I didn’t think the MTA could sink any lower,” she said on TV yesterday, “but I was wrong.”

There you go. That’s a direct quote from one of the city’s leading transit advocates. While the MTA was not behind this plan — agency heads obvious prefer the more robust Ravitch Plan — Desai channeled all of the ignorance from Albany and all of the uninformed New Yorkers going around to bash the MTA for something the authority did not even propose.

Meanwhile, the TWA’s website, while directing people to contact the Senate, still seems to blame this on the MTA. “Don’t let MTA balance their budget failures on our backs!” screams Desai’s site. She continues:

We know the Governor and legislature is out of touch with ordinary New Yorkers who do the daily grind of driving a taxicab for a living—considered the most dangerous job in the country by the Department of Labor—but they are also out of touch with our riders. Many of the men and women we serve everyday are the elderly visiting a doctor or a janitor going home from the night shift or a parent with a baby stroller or a businessperson running to meet their job’s demands.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. First, according to the Department of Labor, mining, logging and slaughterhouse jobs are far and away the most dangerous in the nation. To even mention taxi drivers in that statement is a joke.

Second, those janitors coming from their night shifts — they can’t afford taxis. They need the late night subway service set to be cut. But again, that’s neither here nor there.

Like so many other advocates, like so many politicians, Desai is taking the truth and throwing it out the window. Add another one to the list of people out of touch with New Yorkers and the needs of this city.

Pardon me while I leave the underground world of transportation and visit the devoted straphanger’s sometimes-nemesis, sometimes-friend: the taxi cab.

I’ve long been fascinated with New York City taxis in a more academic way than I am with the city’s subways. More specifically, I’ve watched with interest as the city has pioneered a radical plan to convert its entire taxi fleet from fuel-guzzling Ford Crown Vics to green hybrids of all shapes and sizes.

The root of my interest began in the spring of 2004 as hybrids were slowly becoming a popular item. I was enrolled in a class on the political economy of the automobile, and for one of my term papers, I proposed that the City of New York should convert its entire fleet into hybrids. Little did I know how prescient I would be.

The gist of the paper — which you can find here as a Word document — was that cab drivers would see significant fuel savings by switching to hybrids designed for optimal use in the stop-and-go traffic environment of New York City. Hybrids, in most cases, get fuel mileage in city traffic two to three times greater than the old Crown Victoria taxis do. While some passengers would be inconvenienced by the smaller trunk space and decreased leg room in the hybrids, the social benefits, ranging from a cleaner air to the city’s place as a model taxi fleet, would far outweigh the downsides.

While that is a fairly simple argument, I think it’s held up over time. Since I wrote that paper, the city has indeed embarked on a landmark program to convert its entire fleet to hybrids, and beginning this year, only hybrid cars may be registered as taxis. Considering that the entire taxi fleet turns over every three-to-five years, the clock is ticking for the 15 city miles-per-gallon Crown Victorias, a relic of the day when we worried too little about gas prices and paid too little at the pump for our gas-guzzling ways.

But of course, cab owners aren’t too happy about the switch, and they’re voicing their displeasures. Via Sally Goldenberg in the Post:

Owners cite a shortage of hybrids and argue that they’re also not as safe as the standard, heavy Crown Victorias. Ronald Sherman, a fleet owner and president of the Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade, said major hybrid providers Ford and Toyota can sell only a fifth of the number required to meet the directive. “Clearly, there will not be enough to sustain this mandate,” Sherman said. “The numbers simply don’t add up.”

In a letter to Matthew Daus, chairman of the city Taxi and Limousine Commission, he asked that the city push back the deadline due to a “nationwide hybrid car and parts availability crisis.”

“Crown Victorias are 5-star, across-the-board crash-rated vehicles that withstand severe accidents,” he wrote.

The Post also mentions that Sherman has long been a critic of hybrid taxis and testified against the Ford Escape hybrid earlier this year. That car has since been cleared by auto safety experts.

I can’t really explain Mr. Sherman’s opposition to the hybrids. While he is concerned about black-market cabs with more trunk space stealing the yellow cab businesses when the smaller trunks are prevalent, anyone who’s ever hailed a cab in New York will be quick to dispute this point with Sherman. The vast majority of people aren’t taking taxis with suitcases, and those who do will find a way to fit their suitcases into the back of a taxicab.

In the end, it’s all about an auto industry voice resisting change for the better. While not as egregious as various promotions celebrating subsidized gas for two years, Sherman’s voice is yet another trying to stem a tide that will help out the city environmentally and cab drivers financially. Trade reps should be encouraging these developments; they should work with the Bloomberg Administration to ensure a smooth transition. In 2008, with gas prices high and global climate change an accepted reality, Sherman’s words seem remarkably out of touch with the times.

This Prius taxi may be off the streets for a few days in early September. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak).

Get ready for some crowded subway cars when September 5th and 6th roll around. Just two days after vacation season and Labor Day weekend draw to close, the Taxi Workers Alliance union members plan to strike over Taxi and Limousine Commission plans to install GPS technology in the city’s 13,000 taxis.

Bobby Cuza, NY1 transit guru and local TV heartthrob, has more:

The Taxi Workers Alliance says that at 5 a.m. on Wednesday, September 5th its members will go on a 48-hour strike…At issue is a new GPS system, a satellite-tracking technology the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission is requiring in all 13,000 of the city’s yellow cabs. It’s just one in a package of technology improvements that also includes a credit card reader and a video screen in every backseat.

The TLC says GPS will allow riders to track their trip on an electronic map, and make it easier to recover lost property. But the Taxi Workers Alliance calls it an invasion of privacy, arguing drivers’ movements could be tracked even while off-duty – and that any technological snafu will cost them.

As I see it, there are two separate issues of varying importance here. Let’s deal with what I consider to be the lesser of the two problems. Taxi drivers are concerned that the GPS system will enable the Taxi and Limousine Commission to track their every move as they drive around the city.

I don’t see this is a legitimate concern. For a while, the city has been able to employ various tracking methods for drivers: E-ZPass records could chart speeds, traffic cameras could watch for transgressions. But it doesn’t happen. In short, no city agency has the money or manpower to monitor every GPS record, and when we’re talking about 13,000 cabs running around the city, the monitoring issue is compounded. GPS systems would allow riders to get fair treatment; taxi drivers wouldn’t and shouldn’t have to worry about Big Brother.

The second issue is neatly summarized by Taxi Workers Alliance Executive Director Bhairavi Desai. “The technology, if it shuts down, the meter shuts down,” Desai said to Cuza. “If the meter shuts down, the drivers cannot pick up a fare.”

This is a legitimate concern and one the city and T&LC should address. Taxi drivers, who barely eke out a living as it is, shouldn’t have to bare the brunt of the costs if the city-mandated technology fails. Here, I side with the taxi drivers.

Meanwhile, how will this affect those of us who avoid taxis and take the subway? Well, for two days at a time when the city’s population is swelling with vacationers returning home and college students checking in for the year, 13,000 taxis will be off the roads. Expect crowded trains and grumpy people who usually think they’re too good for the subway stooping to the level of a common straphanger. Oh, joy. I can’t wait.