Columns

Luxury need not be big and obnoxious

By SUE CARLTON, Times Columnist
Published September 21, 2007

It's not easy going green. Just ask local businessman Moshe Leib.

Owner of TB Limo Black Car Service in North Redington Beach, Leib has town cars to ferry you around all fancy-like, including a stretch eight-passenger version.

This year, he bought a Toyota Prius hybrid car, too.

At about 45 miles per gallon, the trendy little Prius tends to sip rather than guzzle like a frat boy at a kegger. (Funny, isn't it, how we've come to think of $2.75 a gallon as getting a break?)

Anyway, because of that gas mileage, Leib can spare passengers the regular fuel charge, a discount of about five bucks. And you don't have to be a crunchy granola type to appreciate an environmentally friendly option for your ride to and from the airport, right?

(Sound of screeching brakes here.)

In order to use his Prius to pick up passengers at Tampa International Airport or the Channelside cruise ship terminal, two hot spots for the cab-and-limo industry, Leib needed a nod from the board that regulates cars-for-hire, the Hillsborough Public Transportation Commission.

Certainly the smallish black Prius, even with its black leather interior and tinted windows, is no stretch Hummer. (But hey, if you want to hire possibly the most pretentious and obnoxious tanklike vehicle ever to roll down a public road, you've got plenty of options out there.)

The rules say licensed limos must be luxury cars as defined by the trusty Kelley Blue Book. But Leib could ask for a waiver, and you would think he'd have had a shot.

While his would have been the first eco-friendly hybrid licensed for public hire in Hillsborough County, it would hardly have been unprecedented.

Hybrids are showing up in fleets and eco-minded car-for-hire companies in New York, Arizona and Boston. In California, Leonardo DiCaprio and Al Gore are said to hire them.

"Other limousine drivers laughed at me when I first showed up at events," the owner of the Santa Monica-based Eco-Limo told the Los Angeles Times. "They aren't laughing anymore."

Leib was not so lucky. His Prius got a big thumbs-down.

Then-executive director Gregory Cox had said a waiver could open the door to other vehicles inappropriate for high-end services. (Couldn't they just say no to the guy with the '60s VW bug with the primered door panel and coat hanger antenna?)

So in a bit of silliness, Leib can use the car to drop off passengers in Hillsborough, but can't pick them up there. He has taken his case to federal court.

"Utterly ridiculous," sighs his lawyer, Luke Lirot. "It's not like driving up in the Oscar Meyer hot dog car. Only here would the abundantly obvious be something you had to establish through litigation."

For the record, your honor, my dictionary does not define "luxury" as "really, really big," nor "equipped with DVD, wet bar, jacuzzi and sun roof big enough for several drunken bridesmaids to hang out of."

Mine calls luxury "a material object, service, etc., conducive to sumptuous living, usually a delicacy, elegance, or refinement of living rather than a necessity."

I don't know about you, but having a choice of a chauffeured ride in a nice car that makes me feel a little better about the world sounds sort of swanky to me.

[Last modified September 20, 2007, 23:47:21]