New York City Taxi of Tomorrow plans hit a roadblock

New York City administration's plan to replace current taxi cabs with the specially developed Nissan Taxi of Tomorrow has been stymied by a recent legal decision, the Wall Street Journal is reporting.

The New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan (it's a bit confusing, but this is actually the on the level of the lowest state courts in New York state's court system) has issued a decision which determined the project to be an overreach of executive authority, siding with taxi magnate Evgeny Freidman and the Greater New York Taxi Association.

The court stated that city's Taxi and Limousine Commission lacked the authority to compel cab companies to purchase the any particular vehicle -- in this case, the Nissan NV200 Taxi, which was slated to hit streets just a couple weeks from now on Oct. 28.

In a competition to build the Taxi of Tomorrow overseen by the Taxi and Limousine Commission, Nissan won the contract to design and build the vehicle. It is currently in production in Mexico. Cab company operators have voiced concerns such as the unavailability of hybrid powertrains for the NV200, a problem which Nissan promises a fix for by 2015. Cab companies siding with Freidman and the Greater New York Taxi Association would have preferred to replace aging nonhybrid cabs with hybrids, which are rapidly taking over New York's cab fleets.

Under the city's original plans, cab companies would have been required to replace all non-hybrid taxis with the NV200 over a three- to five-year time span. Justice Shlomo Hagler, in ruling for the cab companies wrote, "Simply stated, the power to contract and compel medallion owners to purchase the Nissan NV200 from Nissan for 10 years does not exist in the City Charter."

The court also noted that the city's plan violated the state's separation of powers doctrine, in that it was within the city council's authority, rather than the city administration's regulators, to implement policies regarding city cabs.

By Jay Ramey