Big Green Taxi

Mayor Mike Bloomberg wants to replace New York's taxi fleet with hybrids by the year 2012.  In addition to being good for the environment, it's clearly part of the mayor's strategy to make NYC a more attractive, cleaner, outdoor-oriented and family-friendly city - and in so doing to improve its position especially viz a viz London in the global battle for talent.

Comments

[Michael Wells]

Good for NYC. This is going on internationally as well. In India, there's a huge move to convert not only buses but the ubiquitous 2-cycle rickshaws in big cities to propane. I think Delhi is well on the way, I’m not sure of the timelines for Mumbai. I heard Pune is ordering propane use too.

India has incredibly bad air pollution, people wear facemasks in the street, and this is an attempt to clean it up. Most of the rickshaw drivers are one person small businesses, quite poor, and will attempt the conversion themselves. They're used to pulling off the road and fixing their engines with a screwdriver and crescent wrench.

The move to Green is spreading. All Portland schoolbuses run on propane, city vehicles use 5% to 20% biodesel. Las Vegas city fleet uses 63% alternative fuels, many other cities are coming along.

Yes, this positions a city for attracting the creative class, but soon it will be so widespread that it won't be much of an advantage, although the lack of green vehicles will make a place stand out as backward.

[Ken]

In a related note, the sales of large SUVs are up, in the face of high gas prices. Anyone care to guess just who is buying these monsters?