Just bring back the Checker cab, already.
The city and its largest group of taxi owners and drivers have become locked in a new legal battle, with the owners charging that taxi brass are forcing them to buy gas-guzzling Crown Victorias because officials can’t decide which model to choose as the city’s new fuel-efficient yellow cab.
As the city bigs waffle over the issue, the owners are forced to buy the only commercially available taxicab currently approved by the Taxi and Limousine Commission — the Crown Vic, which Ford will soon take out of production — or smaller fuel-efficient cars, such as the Toyota Camry hybrid or the Volkswagen Jetta TDI, that don’t stand up to grueling daily driving, the suit says.
The dispute is part of an amendment to a related suit, filed in Manhattan federal court, in which the owners group says the city won’t approve the successor to the Crown Vic, the Ford Transit Connect, because it doesn’t meet its fuel-efficiency standards.
Ironically, the Transit Connect is one of the finalists in the city’s contest to pick the next generation of taxi.
Either way, the contest, called the Taxi of Tomorrow, is taking entirely too long, said Michael Woloz, a lobbyist for the owners.
“We don’t have a taxi of today,” Woloz said.
But Adam Stolorow, senior counsel with the city Law Department, said, “We are reviewing the plaintiffs’ letter to the judge, and we believe that they’re misunderstanding the TLC’s plans.”
The owners group has so far defeated the city in two other federal suits — winning one ruling that banned the city from mandating that all taxi cabs be hybrids.
As an end run around that decision, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York) and Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-Manhattan) yesterday said they will introduce a bill in both houses of Congress that would allow “all major cities to raise fuel-efficiency standards for taxis.”