Boston, Other Cities Debate Hybrid Taxis

By Kate Galbraith

Uli Seit for The New York Times It’s not easy — or cheap — being green, some cab drivers in New York and Boston have complained.

New York is not the only city to encounter stiff debate over how to deploy hybrid taxis.

In Boston, an association of taxi drivers and medallion owners filed a lawsuit last Friday to block a measure requiring that the city’s 1,825 cabs go hybrid by 2015, according to the Boston Globe.

“The owners are essentially saying, ‘Look, we’re not against going green, we’re against going broke,’” said Andrew Herbert, a manager at U.S.A. Taxi Garage, according to The Globe.

The owners complain that the requirement comes at a terrible economic time — particularly given that it requires the purchase of new hybrid vehicles. Taxi companies want the option of buying used hybrids, which are substantially cheaper.

(Hybrids already account for about 10 percent of Boston’s taxi fleet, according to The Globe article.)

In New York, owners filed a similar lawsuit last year following Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s efforts to hybridize the fleet by 2012. In October, a federal judge ruled against the mayor, and The Globe reports that Boston drivers are employing arguments similar to those used in the New York case.

Mr. Bloomberg has rebounded with another tack: tax incentives for hybrids (as well as financial penalties for owners of relative gas-guzzlers like Ford Crown Victorias).

Elsewhere, the introduction of hybrids has gone more smoothly.

The Los Angeles Times reports that in San Francisco, where 14 percent of the fleet is made up of hybrids, one hybrid-driving driver crowed that he had the “carbon footprint of an Ethiopian child.”

Denver also has at least one cab company whose fleet is comprised of 10 percent Toyota Priuses, according to the Denver Post.