Judge Says NYC Can’t Force Taxi Companies to Buy Nissan NV200s

New York City’s “Taxi of Tomorrow” may need to be renamed “One of the Taxis of Tomorrow,” now that a New York court has decided that the Taxi and Limousine Commission cannot force all taxi operators to buy one single model. The order is really a question of law—what legal authority New York’s TLC has to make this kind of decision—and not about whether the anointed vehicle, the Nissan NV200, was an appropriate choice. According to a statement put out by the city’s lawyers, they’ll be filing an appeal immediately. Nissan had asked (and was allowed) to join the defense of the lawsuit, but a spokesman was unable to say whether the company was deciding whether to participate in the appeal.

The “Taxi of Tomorrow” program provided that starting this month, any newly purchased taxi in New York had to be an NV200. Other vehicles currently used as taxis there can continue to stay on the road until they die. Yellow cabs in New York are owned and operated by private individuals and corporations, who must own “medallions,” or licenses to run a yellow cab. There are roughly 13,000 medallions in circulation, but the city rarely auctions off new ones. Most are bought and sold on a private market through brokers, and prices recently topped $1 million each. It should come as no surprise that 35 corporations own 40 percent of the medallions in New York.

What’s really at the heart of the problem, though, is that New York City and the TLC are being sued from every direction in response to their tightening grip over the taxi business. Having the Taxi and Limousine Commission set parameters for eligible vehicles is good. Having the TLC pick winners and losers is not, especially when you look at the people involved and what’s at stake.

• First, taxi owners must buy hybrids. In 2007, New York passed a law requiring every new taxi to be a hybrid. Taxi owners sued and won.

• Then, taxi owners cannot buy hybrids. A group of taxi owners won a lawsuit this past May after arguing that they should be allowed to buy hybrid vehicles, as the Nissan NV200 is not available as a hybrid. The city still has a law on the books that a certain percentage of taxis must be hybrids. The owners won again. The city agreed to allow the purchase of other approved hybrids (Toyota Prius V, Toyota Highlander hybrid, Lexus RX450h) until the NV200 hybrid is released in 2014. Supposedly, Mayor Mike Bloomberg told the CEO of one of the largest taxi-owning companies that after his term ends in January of 2014, “I’m going to destroy your f*cking industry.“

• The NV200 is not handicapped accessible. Disability Rights Advocates, a non-profit organization, filed a lawsuit against NYC last year, claiming that the city should have selected a wheelchair-friendly vehicle as its official “Taxi of Tomorrow.” We agree. If the city says it has the right to tell taxi buyers what to buy, then the vehicle choices are subject to the Americans With Disabilities Act. There will still be disabled people in New York tomorrow and for the foreseeable future, and as of now, only 2 percent of yellow cabs in New York are handicapped accessible. Retrofits to make the NV200s wheelchair-friendly are said to cost $14,000. The current New York system requires a disabled person needing a taxi to call for a ride from a special paratransit fleet. Disabled New Yorkers with whom we spoke say that the waits are unreasonably long, and the special vehicles often never arrive. There’s also a law in New York that requires any van used as a taxi to be handicapped accessible. New York says the NV200 is a car, not a van. Nissan’s own marketing materials call the NV200 a van. That right there should be game over, legally.

• First Drive: 2013 Nissan NV200 Compact Cargo Van
• Photos and Info: 2014 Ford Transit Connect Wagon
• Instrumented Test: 2013 Ford C-Max Energi Plug-In Hybrid

• Very likely future lawsuits alleging racial discrimination. The TLC pushed for, and eventually succeeded in getting New York to allow the use of smartphone apps to hail cabs. Previously, New York taxis were required by law to stop for anyone hailing them, so long as they didn’t have passengers on board and didn’t have their “off duty” light illuminated. Why is that the law? Because into the 1990s, many taxi drivers were refusing to stop for people they considered undesirable fares—in practice, this meant African Americans and other racial minorities. But now that people can request a taxi by their phone, those taxi drivers who would be inclined to discriminatory pickups have an out. Instead of either being on duty and thus required to stop, a taxi driver can now set up his lights so that he appears to be en route to a scheduled pickup—and then stop only for the passengers he prefers. A lawsuit was filed immediately after the TLC introduced the smartphone system, and lost. Make no mistake, there will be another after this system has been in place for long enough that there are actual incidents.

“Tomorrow” is looking pretty dystopian for the City of New York’s government.

Source: CarAndDriver