New York's Taxi of Tomorrow, said to be a big step up from the Crown Vic fleet circulating the city, might be so yesterday.

That's because embattled mayoral candidate/ Comptroller John Liu, who has become very vocal on a variety of issues as his campaign progresses, will not ink the agreement unless the cabs are wheelchair accessible. Other local pols have banded behind him.

Liu said at a press conference today that New York must take after cities such as London, and that Mayor Michael Bloomberg botched an opportunity to right a wrong "that New Yorkers with disabilities have been fighting to achieve for nearly two decades." (Note: The Voice didn't attend, but was provided with participants' comments.)

He also claimed the future taxi currently presents legal challenges, saying: "Requiring cabs to have independent passenger climate controls is nice, but when you fail to make them accessible to a growing number of New Yorkers, it's not just a slap in the face, it's illegal. We will send back any plan that does not uphold the civil rights demanded by the Americans with Disabilities Act."

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Sam Levin

The new "apple green" Boro Taxi, unveiled at City Hall this morning.

It's not lime green, not key lime pie green, not sea-foam green, nor is it chartreuse. Nope. The city's new taxi for upper Manhattan and the outer boroughs, unveiled this morning, is apple green.

The mayor's office emphasized this specific shade of green at a press conference at City Hall this morning by having a basket of green apples on site and one prop apple at the podium that speakers could hold on to and toss in the air if they wanted, to emphasize that this new taxi is in fact "apple" green -- a topic of much debate among reporters in attendance.

In front of the steps of City Hall, the mayor's office took the cover off a model of the new taxi, which looks a lot like the yellow taxis, only it's (apple) green.

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New York has supposedly stepped into the future with high-tech taxis which, sadly, are nothing like the vehicles in The Fifth Element.

Anyway, the City will soon have a new official fleet of Nissan NV200 cabs, which will feature amenities such as sliding doors, skylights, USB cell phone chargers, GPS, and odor-resistant(?) upholstery.

While some herald the end of the Crown Vic era as a step in the right direction, there's clearly lots of room for improvement -- aside from making these cabs more Korben Dallas-like. Runnin' Scared's expert team has come up with a list of features that must be added to these Nissans immediately.

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Sometimes the best ideas come to you while you're sitting drunk in the back of a taxi cab.

At least that's how it happened with three adventure-seeking buddies from England who are riding a taxi across the globe in an effort to break the world record for longest taxi ride ever.

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The days of having to carry around cash in order to take cabs are so long gone. Now, in addition to taxi's ubiquitous credit card machines, the Taxi & Limousine Commission is soliciting proposals for an app that will allow people to pay for their ride on their smartphone. It's just the next step in the inevitable progression to being beamed to our destination through our iPhone. In all seriousness, though, according to a notice from the TLC a payment app will serve functions beyond simply the exchange of funds. An app can allow riders to get emailed receipts that could help them find property that might have gotten lost or file a "compliment/complaint." (There already is an app just for complaints.)

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When was the last time you wore a seatbelt in the backseat of a New York City cab?

That's not a rhetorical question -- we really want to know. If you're like us, you literally have no idea. Also like us, for many New Yorkers, it's very possible that the answer to that question is "never."

We don't not do it because of some macho belief that we're invincible, we don't buckle up for a number of reasons -- namely laziness, preoccupation, and our misguided trust that just because the driver's picture is behind his seat, he knows what the hell he's doing.

Leave it to the New York Daily News to rain on our unbuckled parade -- reporter Heidi Evans used the front page of yesterday's edition to tell taxicab horror stories about face-altering injuries caused by people's failure to buckle up.

Take the case of Jane Lee, for example, who Evans writes "learned her lesson the hard way."

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Putting on a seatbelt in a cab sometimes seems like the biggest effort in the world. Because, really, you're only going to be in the cab for five minutes, you don't know where that piece of fabric has been or whose neck it has touched and you also want to be able to lean forward when the meter goes on so you can turn off the Taxi TV the instant it starts to jabber away. However -- if those ads instated back in December (on the TVs, mind you) didn't send a motherly reminder to buckle up -- then maybe these New York Daily News stories today will. Daily News explains how people who don't put their seatbelts on in cabs are getting gruesome injuries after their faces slam into the plastic partitions in between riders and drivers. And there's a picture!

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Original police sketch of the suspect.

New York City yellow cab driver Gurmeet Singh, 40, of Queens, has been arrested by the NYPD in connection with the alleged knifepoint rape of a 26-year-old female passenger. Singh has been charged with rape, robbery, assault, menacing, and sex abuse, reports NBC NY -- he reportedly stole the victim's phone and $20 before he fled the scene of the incident, which occurred in Williamsburg in May.

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Buckle up, young man.

Upset or perhaps personally just really offended that a majority -- 65 percent! -- of yellow cab passengers are not doing the barest minimum to keep themselves safe, and did we really raise you this way, I don't think so, put your goddamn seatbelt on when you're riding in a cab, you don't know how that stranger is going to drive, sorry, we know you're a grownup now, but could you take a little better care of yourself? -- the TLC has announced it will run reminder ads on taxi TVs to "convince" passengers to buckle up.

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EV Grieve reports (with photos) that someone allegedly "blew out the window" of a cab last night at Avenue A near 14th Street. Per the tipster, Matt LES_Miserable, police were on the scene and the driver was "very shaken up" and said a passenger had shot out his window. The hows and whys are unclear, though it seems quite evident this is not how to persuade someone to take you to Brooklyn.

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