On Art
NOR, VIVIEN RAY
On Art HAILING THE TAXICAB BY VIVIEN RAYNOR A Automotive engineering buffs will have the best time at The Taxi Project (Museum of Modern Art, through September 7). But the show, co-sponsored by...
...They are one of the city's scenic attractions...
...It is, of course, a fact of life that whole suburbs would disappear without the automobile, and the figure of 3,400 for communities whose only form of public transportation is the taxi sounds correct (even if the term community is vague...
...It covers everything from maneuverability and acceptable emission levels to ashtrays (theft-proof) and meters visible to driver and passenger alike...
...Characters include women with too many difficult packages, men who are too bulky, a woman with a fidgety child, a man with a potted palm, and so forth...
...While it is a truism that functional objects are beautiful, one cannot help suspecting the manual of barking up not so much the wrong tree, as too many trees...
...If the spectacle was bizarre, it surely was no more so than what they were thrown out of: the government and a multinational petroleum giant playing at innovative reform...
...Starting from the premise that taxis are here to stay, the Museum, in company with the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission, engineering consultants, and representatives from the trade, compiled a design manual...
...The plethora of guidelines inevitably made for uninspired design, as well as for more things to go wrong...
...No prices are quoted, but the New York Times reported that they cost about twice as much as existing cabs...
...Advocacy of more automobiles, however modified, smacks of academic frivolity...
...The scenes are generally humorous, especially Alfa's, where the models are clad in almost-transparent yellow long Johns...
...For some reason they wear shoes only when demonstrating how to enter with a suitcase...
...Their respective needs are inadequately met at first by regular cabs, then satisfied by Volvo's special version, with its large, flat floor area, generous seating space and extensive headroom...
...Rarely do his breakthroughs ease everyday life...
...At the very least, concern about the poor, elderly and handicapped—a triumvirate that is continually invoked here—seems misdirected: No plans for lowering taxi fares are on the boards...
...Like the show's organizers, Wohl is an excellent example of the native genius for subverting basic definitions...
...Unleashing the taxicab is clearly the next move to improve public transportation in our cities.' He follows this surprising thrust by suggesting subsidies for the taxi industry, if it can be made to accommodate the needs of the poor, the handicapped and the aged...
...Today's design thinking has an authoritarian tone to it, implying that beneficiaries of revolutionary objects require special training to appreciate and use them...
...Steam Power Systems and American Machine and Foundry (both of California), and then only under contract to the Department of Transportation...
...Alfa's presence is somewhat beside the point, since its model was built specifically for the European market...
...He writes, too, that "fare reductions do not significantly increase transit usage and they have little leverage for luring automobile users into subway cars or buses...
...A As long as an example of the London taxi (tried here during the Lindsay administration and dropped for maintenance reasons) is in the show, the absence of its American equivalent, the Checker, is a definite drawback...
...One of the men was quoted as saying, "I was criticizing what I saw as false...
...Volvo, Volkswagen and Alfa Romeo did come up with prototypes, though...
...A unique feature of the Volvo is a hoop that replaces the safety belts passengers tend not to use...
...Steam Power Systems weighs in lightest at 2,950 pounds, with Volkswagen the heaviest at 4,740...
...Altogether, there is something dilettantish and weird about the enterprise, reminiscent of MOMA's Italy: The New Domestic Landscape, a 1972 show also mounted by Curator of Design Emilio Ambasz...
...They are shorter than the standard cab by six inches to one and a half feet, and have either sliding or bifold passenger doors...
...Thus the project furnished another glimpse into the mind of the contemporary designer: He may think big, but he all too often produces small and obsessively neat...
...That taxicabs provide the country as a whole with "over 70 per cent more rides than all rapid transit systems combined" becomes rather less impressive when one considers how few cities have subways...
...In addition, one feels the need of something more than the persuasive text and illustrations to demonstrate exactly what the modifications add up to, beyond being able to enter a cab while in a wheelchair (by a ramp), or to sit with a tuba balanced on one's lap...
...Looking like a padded rollbar, it can be lowered to rest on the lap and doubles, in theory, as a child restrainer...
...For reasons undisclosed, just two American companies responded...
...They are very well displayed under spotlights and beside a mock Manhattan skyline in darkened blue and black rooms, yet the prototypes are dowdy-looking...
...Department of Transportation, offers a bit of controversy and enjoyment to anyone who has ever taken a cab...
...All the designs, whether powered by steam, diesel fuel, gasoline or, like the Volkswagen, by a combination of electricity and gasoline, meet current emission standards...
...And to state that the "monetary turnover" of New York City cabs is greater than the Metropolitan Transit Authority's cash intake seems to be merely another way of saying that it costs more to take a cab than a bus...
...Zipping along the dingy streets, they are also a pleasure to watch in the daytime, particularly when, secure in its yellowness, one cuts across the bow of a bus to scoop up a passenger?cabs are to bus drivers as cats are to dogs...
...No matter—it all makes for an entertaining event...
...Each of these utilitarian vehicles is surrounded by a low ramp full of vital statistics, and most are accompanied by slides of the cab in use...
...Volvo uses the before-and-after technique for presenting its innovations...
...But most of the statistical material seems intended to prove the proposition that the cab, far from being a luxury for the affluent, is a preferred and sometimes necessary way of getting around for a large part of the American population...
...Consider the New York subway map, decipherable only by cryptologists, or the new pill bottles, impenetrable by almost anyone except a child with time on its hands...
...Perhaps it was in part a subliminal awareness of this attitude that helped precipitate a recent scuffle at the Museum of Modern Art...
...Many such systems have, in fact, been improved with no concurrent increase in rider-ship...
...it was included here because the cab was designed according to the exhibition guidelines...
...especially at night as they thunder down Fifth Avenue in packs, their drivers alert to the smallest gesture that might signal prey...
...Some of the catalogue pictures seem more elegant: They were taken with a fish-eye lens and the distortion helps...
...I feel protective of New York's cabs and their snappy visual lines...
...As reported in the Times, two leaders of taxi owner-driver associations were ejected for being "loud and abusive...
...as the UMTA itself states in the catalogue, "total absence of pollution is still beyond the limits of technology...
...In further support of this point, Martin Wohl, Professor of Transportation Planning at Carnegie Mellon University, claims in a catalogue article that the trend toward the taxi has nothing to do with the decay of public transit...
...most often they try to make virtues out of evils and inconveniences by accommodating them...
...Despite my doubts about the taxi's role in America's future...
...My esthetic criticisms should not be taken as mere art-for-art's sake falderal, by the way...
...To emphasize the importance of the project, the exhibition features an abundance of statistics...
...Nevertheless, the show's implied philosophy is food enough for thought...
...The noncontending Alfa, in green (the rest stick to yellow), has the best shape, but they are all fairly boxy and deep-sided, looking a little like delivery vans with picture windows...
...Moreover, if any of those cab drivers who stopped short only of chintz curtains in making their chariots homes-away-from-home are still left, they will love Volvo's front-seat accessories—including a writing table with lamp and a small refrigerator...
...The other vehicles' individual selling points are too numerous to list, although Steam Power Systems' entry is noteworthy for a sensible roof-top luggage rack...
...We are obviously devoting most of our public transportation planning to helping people who least need help," Wohl maintains...
...Many of them, however, are a little slippery...
...People apparently prefer the automobile—parking problems, pollution and traffic jams notwithstanding—because it comes closest to the "comfort, privacy and convenience" they want...
...Turning cabs into minibuses available to everyone is a lot like putting draft beer in cans...
...MOMA then invited all the major American motor vehicle manufacturers, as well as Volvo and Volkswagen, who have production facilities in this country, to submit cars made to the manual's specifications...
...But the show, co-sponsored by Mobil Oil and the Urban Mass Transportation Administration (UMTA) of the U.S...
...Indeed, the city would be the poorer were it to be taken over by any of the models shown at the MOMA...
Vol. 59 • August 1976 • No. 16
