To view our videos, you need to
enable JavaScript. Learn how.
install Adobe Flash 9 or above. Install now.

Then come back here and refresh the page.

The Supreme Court dealt strike three Monday to the city's plan to make cab companies buy more environmentally friendly vehicles to replace the gas guzzling Ford Crown Victoria that still makes up a large part of the fleet. Two lower courts had already ruled against the regulation and the high courts refused the city's appeal, saying it's up to federal agencies -- not local officials -- to regulate fuel economy and emissions standards.

"Well it's bitterly disappointing. Here you have a 35 year old law that Congress wrote to clean the air and you have the courts interpreting it to put handcuffs on cities and states that are trying to reduce air pollution. It makes no sense," said Taxi and Limousine Commissioner David Yassky.

Yassky says his agency will have to figure whether there are any steps it can take to lower pollution now that the court has acted.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been championing the plan for years and pushing it every step of the way through the courts. He says now the city will have to lobby Congress to update environmental law.

"I think there's a whole bunch of cities that joined us, the cities are those that are addressing real world problems like climate change and energy policy. The federal government seems unable to address those issues," Bloomberg said.

A group of taxi owners brought the original suit against the plan back in 2008. They say they agreed with the idea to put a more fuel efficient fleet on the street but that the mayor's vision just wasn't realistic.

"Unfortunately when the original plan that the mayor announced in 2007 was accelerated by four years, it put us in a position where we simply couldn't comply," said Michael Woloz of the Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand proposed a bill in 2009 called the Green Taxis Act that would tweak the federal law’s language to allow local governments to set emissions standards.

A spokeswoman for the senator says she is planning to re-introduce the legislation “soon.”

Currently, almost a third of all the taxis on city streets are high mileage hybrids.