The city of Chicago’s Drive Clean Taxi program is open to taxi cab owners and other public passenger vehicle fleets in good standing with the City’s Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection (BACP).

The City’s Drive Clean Chicago program announced it is now accepting applications for a federally funded program that will deploy at least 120 green taxi and livery service vehicles in Chicago through the new Drive Clean Taxi program.

The program, administered by the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) in cooperation with CALSTART, a national nonprofit dedicated to expanding the use of clean vehicles, will make the city’s already green public passenger fleet even more fuel efficient and environmentally friendly. It will allow pre-approved vendors to offer a discount of up to $10,000 on purchases of electric or compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles for use as taxis or livery service cars.

“Drive Clean Chicago and Drive Clean Taxi provide us with a great opportunity to improve air quality and the overall quality of life in Chicago by increasing the number of green vehicles on the city’s streets,” CDOT Commissioner Rebekah Scheinfeld said. “These programs benefit all Chicagoans by reducing petroleum use and helping to build a cleaner transportation network for the City of Chicago.”

Drive Clean Taxi is open to taxi cab owners and other public passenger vehicle fleets in good standing with the City’s Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection (BACP). BACP licenses and regulates the public vehicle industry in the city of Chicago.

“I encourage the city’s public vehicle industry to take advantage of the additional funding option to begin driving a fuel efficient vehicle, which will also put more money in drivers pockets,” BACP Commissioner Maria Guerra Lapacek said. “It is also good to know our fleet is continuing to incorporate vehicles that are friendly to the environment too.”

The City of Chicago has made tremendous progress since 2011 in converting its taxi fleet to more fuel-efficient vehicles. In 2011, approximately 88 percent of the city’s taxi fleet was gas-powered vs. 10 percent hybrid — those numbers have reversed dramatically and the fleet is currently 82 percent hybrid and 12 percent gas-powered, with the balance made up of CNG and flex fueled vehicles.

Drive Clean Chicago and Drive Clean Taxi are funded through federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) Program dollars provided to the City of Chicago by the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, the Illinois Department of Transportation and the federal government.

The Drive Clean Taxi enables vendors to offer discounts of up to $10,000 toward each purchased or leased vehicle. Vouchers offered under the program are available on a first-come, first-served basis.

Interested public passenger fleets may visit Drive Clean Chicago’s website at www.DriveCleanChicago.com for more information on how to participate. A webinar will be held Sept. 9 for interested parties to learn more about the Drive Clean Taxi voucher program. Webinar details are available on the Drive Clean Chicago website.

In 2014 Drive Clean Chicago launched the Drive Clean Truck program, a voucher incentive for eligible electric and hybrid Class 2 – 8 vehicles. Commercial and public fleets that operate in Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will counties are encouraged to work with an approved vendor to request an incentive. Voucher amounts are 80 percent of the incremental or up-fitting costs per vehicle. Drive Clean Truck aims to deploy as many as 250 electric and hybrid trucks and buses.

Through similar federally funded incentive programs, the City has helped deploy over 400 cleaner vehicles for Chicago area fleets and over 220 alternative fuel stations since 2010. To date, these vehicles and stations have displaced 7.5 million gallons of gasoline and reduced greenhouse gas emissions by an amount comparable to taking 3,750 cars off the road.

— Drive Clean Chicago program accepting applications —