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 as Matchbox cars." Ha. Daus did emphasize "I feel very strong about the taxi staying yellow," and from Newsday's slideshow of images, it seems like most people agree. But this effort to discuss a redesign sounds lofty Gothamist, as much as we love it, because it seems that the TLC has some bureaucratic problems to deal with. Like auctioning discounted taxi medallions for fuel-efficient cars, but not actually approving fuel-efficient cars for use as cabs, as reported by the NY Times. That is seriously hilarious. Daus claims the TLC does want hybrids, just hybrids with lots of legroom, since passengers complain about legroom most, and not many of them have that much.
One taxi feature Gothamist would like to see: A way to nicely tell the cab driver not to get into fights with other cars, because that's scary.
Image from Antenna Design
