This Sleek, Yellow Box-Car Is New York’s Taxi of the Future
The Bloomberg administration proposed revamping New York City’s standard taxi in 2011, and chose a minivan-esque Nissan as the official “Taxi of the Future,” in that year. According to the New York Times, the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) has announced that Bloomberg’s yellow box-car is destined to hit city streets by September 1st.
So, New York, the time has come: Meet your soon-to-be standard-bearer of modern transportation. It’s sleek and shiny, but it isn’t an Uber. In fact, it’s quite the opposite of an Uber, because it’s an official New York City cab. It’s the Nissan NV200, and its got a pretty slim design that’s more reminiscent of the vans you’ll see on the streets of London and Paris. It also uses a fuel efficient engine. The idea behind the cab is to provide more street space so as to avoid congestion–something the de Blasio administration has pledged to alleviate, in the form of limiting rideshare services.
The NV200’s triumph was not without a something of a battle, as are many things currently pertaining to ground transportation in New York. The Times reports that the Greater Taxi Association of New York didn’t like the TLC’s enforcement of a standard car for cab drivers, noting that mandating cabbies to buy a certain model was an overreach of its power.
But the TLC eventually won the case, and aims to enforce the new taxi legislation by September 1st.