TLC Says Drivers Won't Lose on New Green Fleet Plan

The Taxi & Limousine Commission calls to explain that its new, environmentally-conscious taxi plan, described here earlier as a burden on cabbies, would save hybrid-driving hacks more than it would cost them. While fleet owners who buy hybrids would, under the plan, be allowed to charge cabbies $3 a shift more to lease them, TLC says the drivers will save an average of $15 a shift on gas.

Conversely, the TLC wants to lower the cap for owners leasing those old, gas-hog Crown Victorias by $12 a shift, a "disincentive" which should convince owners to cough up the extra money ($2,430 per cab, the Times estimated last year) and go hybrid. It sounds better to us than it did this afternoon, and a lot better than the forced hybridization plan Bloomberg proposed earlier. But the group who got that ruling tossed, the Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade, isn't so impressed; its head tells NY1 "It is deeply troubling that the city is attempting to do an end run-around a federal court ruling that halted an ill-conceived hybrid taxi mandate."