New York City has some of the worst air quality in America, according to the EPA; will a joint project between the city and state to fund private fleet modernization help clear the air?

New York City has been below the minimum standard for smog and soot by EPA standards for years, a function of the city’s density, and the vast number of commercial vehicles running in it every day. Why commercial vehicles? Because the average New Yorker is actually pretty green–more than 50% of Manhattan families don’t own a car, the only place in America where a Mercury can make you a minority, and the per capita carbon footprint is among the lowest in the nation. With environmental cred like that, it seems hardly likely that NYC would feature the air pollution that it does; unfortunately, thanks to the sheer volume of humanity in the city, per capita statistics only paint part of the picture.

The density is one thing–low per capita pollution, multiplied by millions more people, means that they’re living far more efficiently, but are going to have a severe negative impact on the are around them. At least in America; in Europe, or pretty much anywhere else in the world, they have per capita levels of consumption that make their cities passable. Second, there’s the issue of commercial fleets, and the way that these vehicles–which of course in New York include vast numbers of taxis–contribute to the air quality problem as they age.

So Taxis Pollute. What’s Being Done?

New York City and New York State launched a joint project yesterday to use six million dollars in the most direct action possible: funding half of the cost of new electric or natural gas vehicles. You’ll notice something odd about that, given the buzz in America over the past 12 months: no gas-electric hybrids. New York is throwing down the technological gauntlet, and leveraging the power of the public markets to do it.

Will it work?

It has in the past–this is just the biggest step in a program that has already seen 50 hybrid delivery trucks, 30 compressed natural gas vehicles, and 5 hybrid shuttle buses come into the city. One of the biggest early supporters of the program has been Manhattan Beer Distributors, who converted their 30 delivery trucks to CNG and opened a CNG refueling station, a critical concern if this program is to expand to the levels that the city needs. Over the lifetime of the vehicles that this buy alone represents, however, an estimated 1.08 million gallons of diesel fuel and 400,000 pounds of carbon dioxide will be saved.

More Reading

New York Funds Alternative Fuel Vehicles For Private Fleets (ENS)
NYSERDA Program (New York State)