The Taxi and Limousine Commission has made it official: Cabs purchased after October 1, 2008 must get at least 25 miles per gallon. Then, after fall of 2009, newly purchased cabs must get at least 30 miles per gallon. As the AP puts it, this means "taxi fleet owners, who must replace their cabs every three to five years, will probably be forced to buy fuel-efficient hybrids, which run partly on electricity." The Taxicab Board......

On the Gothamist Newsmap, one of the incidents is "Pedestrian Struck | West 51 Btw 9th & 10th Ave I/f/o Club Posh Manhattan, NY | 5/9/2007 2:14 a.m." It turns out that the pedestrian isn't any ol' pedestrian -- it happens to be Steve Green, millionaire real-estate developer, onetime member of the "worst landlords of the city" club, and high-profile gay divorcee. Green was leaving Club Posh, walking to his Rolls-Royce, when he was struck......

Earlier this week we wrote about Taxi '07, the weeklong celebration commemorating the 100th birthday of the taxi. In addition to taxi-themed movies, the Empire State Building illuminated taxi yellow, and future taxis at the New York International Auto Show, the Taxi and Limousine Commission is unveiling new door-side graphics that will become standard on all NYC yellow cabs. "Our taxicabs will be getting a makeover with graphics that communicate passenger information in a better......

Did you see CBS 2 Investigates: Too Good For Gridlock? The too-good-for-gridlock offender is Isaac Heschel, a diamond dealer who is also a rabbi and volunteers time as a chaplain to the MTA and Port Authority Police. Heschel frequently uses sirens and lights in his Crown Victoria, but neither agency gave him sirens or lights, meaning that Heschel pimped the car out for emergency fun himself. CBS 2 was tipped off by an anonymous member......

Gothamist likes to eat and can understand getting the late night munchies. But when we're on the road for business late on a Sunday night in a nice hotel that has room service and we get a food stipend, we usually order in. Apparently, if you're Duaner Sanchez in Miami, that's not what you do. Some details have been released about the early Monday morning accident the Mets reliever was involved in. Sanchez, his younger......

Who knew that New York City was a Logan's Run for taxicabs? A lot of people apparently because dealing with "out of date" taxis turns out to be a nice subset of the Taxi business. Since 1996, taxis that are a part of a fleet in New York can be no older than three years old. The catch here is that that age limit is only in New York. In lesser cities like, for......

The Taxi and Limousine Commission has given the okay to introduce hybrid cars as new taxi cabs, starting as soon as this fall. The six new car models, two Hondas, two Toyotas, a Lexus (!), and a Ford, will be more expensive than the old stand-by of the Crown Victoria, but they will be more fuel efficient. Commissioner Matthew Daus says the Crown Vic gets 18 miles a gallon, while the hybrids get at least......

Yesterday, the Design Trust for Public Space and Parsons held the Redesigning Taxi Cab discussion, and Newsday's Ellis Henican has a funny column about reactions and thoughts. He says that no one "seemed too eager yesterday to sing the praises the industry's current workhorse, Ford's 12-mile-a-gallon Crown Victoria, famous for its sunken seats and stringy legroom," but Taxi and Limousine Commissioner Matthew Daus said, "They're not that horrible. They're selling them on 42nd Street......