Medallions have always been regulated and restricted, not to benefit an asset owning class of rent seekers (that was a side effect), but to prevent the narrow, constricted island of Manhattan from choking on gridlock. Lyft and Uber essentially abused a loophole and caused traffic speeds to decline in the core.

Congestion pricing with a fee on all yellow & black car rides for origin and destination within CBD would be the best way other than a cap to regulate this, but that is still quite the political lift due to the windshield perspective of the city’s and state’s politicians.

>> Congestion pricing with a fee on all yellow & black car rides for origin and destination within CBD

If the goal was to reduce congestion in CBD, I'd support that goal...and zone-based pricing fixes that. CBD has extensive and frequent subway service, so that makes sense, esp since congestion pricing can be turned off on non-peak hours when subways dont seem to work.

However, what the city actually did was put a blanket cap on all Uber/Lyft across all boroughs at all times of the day/week -- seems like a move to intentionally hurt Uber/Lyft while not directly solving the above goal (reducing congestion) ...and plus...applying a regressive cost on poorer people.

Further, yellow cabs are much worse than Uber/Lyft pool services w/r/t congestion.

DeBlasio loves regressive taxes. His entire Vision Zero policy is nothing more than an excuse for the NYPD to issue more tickets to poor and middle class drivers.

Drivers in New York are not poor or middle class. A majority of households in New York don't even own a car.

Car ownership varies widely by borough with fewer than 1/5 in Manhattan, more than half in Queens, and over 85% in Staten Island. Ironically this correlates inversely with where live the richest New Yorkers. The vast majority of car owning New Yorkers are squarely middle class and Vision Zero is unquestionably a regressive tax on those citizens in the name of “safety”. A big target of Vision Zero is also Uber drivers who are mostly poor. DeBlasio has specifically said he won’t support scaling traffic fines to income. The real beneficiary here are the blood sucking NYPD who can point to their new stacks of summonses as proof that they care about the community when all they care about is padding their retirement accounts with assets from civil forfeiture.

Both are pretty bad. A Lyft or Uber waiting for a passenger also drives around and causes congestion like a yellow cab. Lyft and Uber have increased total VMT. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dr-gridlock/wp/2018/07/2...

Poor people in New York overwhelmingly don't drive. They don't even own cars. The median car commuter into Manhattan makes far more than the median transit user. https://www.ibo.nyc.ny.us/newsfax/insidethebudget154.pdf

As far as the cap applying to all boroughs; that is because no one would sign up for a license that only went to the outer boroughs. The yellow/green cab experiment failed; introducing a similar dichotomy to black cabs would probably have the same results.

The yellow/green cab experiment failed because it happened before the magic of smartphone ubiquity. The problem with yellow/green cabs was density -- the density outside Manhattan is thin and the area is enormous. The chances of a yellow/green taxi just passing by when you need one is close to zero.

Uber/Lyft solved this issue with beaconing. Uber/Lyft further reduce cost if you pool, which is great all around.

Why is the fee only on yellow and black car rides, rather than on all cars? Shouldn't we prefer non-private vehicles on the street instead of ones that will do parking?

Congestion pricing is a toll around Manhattan south of 60th St. Private cars would pay only on entering or exiting, since you can't use a private car to pick up strangers in New York (even Uber and Lyft use black cabs, which have a different license from yellow cabs that only covers pre-arranged rides and not street hails).

Since cabs may not necessarily enter or exit the CBD while doing the trip within it, a fee equivalent to the toll should be charged for an origin in the CBD or a destination in the CBD, with a double fee charged if the trip stays wholly within it.

The purpose of such a fee and toll would be to keep vehicles flowing. Cabs are actually worse than private cars for this, since private cars spend most of their time parked while cabs spend their time between fares driving in circles.

Parking externality is handled separately; there is a tax on parking fees, and the total number of off-street spots has been capped for a while.

Uber/Lyft as a solution is just about as regressive and ignorant of the working class. The solution is fixing transit.

I'd agree the strategic solution is fixing transit. But for the working class, strategic solutions don't pay rent nor do they fill your stomach today.

Uber/Lyft is both a terrible solution and often the only viable one immediately available. What is the immediate alternative when the transit system isnt working now...walking?

My mother used to take the subways. Now, on off-hours, half the time you end up without subways running, or running express, or running on alternative tracks, or a wall of conflicting reroute posters conflicting with actuality, or subways simply not showing up. She ends up at some random station without elevators or escalators and thinks...why didn't I just Uber this?

For those not familiar with NYC's transit death spiral: Governor Cuomo Announces $1 Billion in New MTA Funding and Declares State of Emergency to Speed Up Subway Repairs

https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/video-photos-rush-transcrip...