Local Government Environmental Policy Innovation: Emerging Regulation of GHG Emissions in the Transportation-for-Hire Industry

Given that most environmental regulation is performed on the international and national scale and that municipal powers are often limited, what are the necessary conditions for local government to take on leadership and policy innovation in this space? The transportation-for-hire industry provides an interesting case study as municipalities around the world recently updated their local regulatory frameworks because of the disruption caused by the advent of ridehailing. Over time, policy learning resulted in policy convergence of major components, including license requirements, vehicle standards, and rate standardization, across the industry. However, overlooked from these initial regulations, but now gaining traction is the regulation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of ridehailing vehicles and the transportation-for-hire industry more generally. Because of how many transportation-for-hire vehicles are in use, activists argue that environmental fleet standards ought to be tougher than that for personal-use vehicles. This paper investigates the emerging regulatory frameworks for GHG emissions by examining four case studies of the first-mover cities (London, Amsterdam, Mexico City, and New York City) in this emerging policy space, untangling the complex web of multi-level regulatory governance to tease our policy learning outcomes. Through the innovative lens of examining multi-level governance for policy learning, we conclude that GHG emissions in the transportation industry at the local level only occurred after international and national frameworks were set, giving “permission” to local leaders to demonstrate innovation and leadership on how to achieve targets set by higher-order governments. Cities, assisted with policy-learning transfer through international not-for-profit organizations, acted via local government powers to fill in the gaps of international and national frameworks with policies implemented at higher orders of government in other places. These local environmental transportation-for-hire bylaws took a three-pronged form: (a) vehicle permit standards; (b) regulations of public space and infrastructure; and (c) public–private partnerships to assist in the transition to electric vehicles.