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New York City May Cap the Number of Uber, Lyft Vehicles On Its Streets (engadget.com)
New York City may become the first major U.S. city to cap the number of Uber and other ride-sharing vehicles on the road. According to Engadget, "The City Council is looking at proposed legislation that would largely freeze the issuance of ridesharing vehicle licenses while officials work on a year-long study of the cars' effects." Wheelchair-accessible vehicles would be exempt from any cap. From the report: This wouldn't be the first time the city tried a cap -- it abandoned an attempt in 2015. There's greater pressure to consider a limit this time, though. NYC now has over 100,000 ride-hailing cars (up from 63,000 back in 2015), and a string of suicides by both ridesharing and taxi drivers has raised questions about working conditions that can include low pay, long hours and poor compensation for time off. On top of the cap, the Council is looking at raising minimum pay and otherwise regulating on-demand transportation services. NYC is concerned that the growth of ridesharing is coming at the expense of drivers' well-being (regardless of who they work for), and it's unlikely to back down until it's satisfied these workers are receiving fair treatment. Uber argues the cap would "leave New Yorkers stranded" without solving issues like congestion, taxi medallion ownership and mass transit. It claimed it would hinder passengers who live outside of Manhattan and don't have reliable alternatives to cabs or public transportation. The company even posted a commercial underscoring how difficult it was for some residents to hail taxis.
Why should the city dictate this crap? This is just pointless and excessive regulation for the point of regulation. Why is there a limit on cabs, other than to create a market for medallions or limit a core commodity to just a few?
Uber is making transportation accessible in cities to the average person. Hopefully they can fight this as ex post facto, reactionary legislation only there to keep the cabbies happy.
And the problems with the medallion system are legendary. Sounds like they want to create another similar boondoggle with rideshare licenses, since capping them seems awfully similar to a de facto second medallion system.
If you're not familiar with taxi medallion issues, let's just start with the biggest. Their massive cost (way down from $500k, but still very high: $160-300k as of this posting) means they're rarely owned by the drivers themselves, who rent them. A slow day often means actually losing money, since fares don't recoup the rental fee. Or even if the owner collects a percentage, a slow day still can often come out below minimum wage. It's a system that pretty much exclusively enriches those who got in a very very long time ago and got them for next to nothing, or those already wealthy who can invest in high cost medallions (though those buying in right before Uber/Lyft crashed the price took it pretty hard); exploiting drivers, who can make decent money but just as often get screwed.