Opinion | Caution, Uber and Lyft, wrecking taxis may turn out to be a multi-company pileup

Uber co-founder Ryan Graves rings a ceremonial bell for the ride-hailing company's initial public offering at the New York Stock Exchange May 10. By Megan McArdle Megan McArdle Columnist Bio Follow Columnist May 24 at 6:00 PM This week, the New York Times did something I would have thought impossible: They made New Yorkers feel bad for cabdrivers.

Uber and Lyft are discovering that the regulatory monopolies they smashed had existed for a reason. Before Uber’s 2009 launch, and Lyft’s a few years later, almost every sizable city tightly controlled its taxi market. Government commissions set fares and limited the supply of taxi licenses. Myriad justifications were offered for these regulations, but fundamentally they existed because without government intervention, no one would make any money.

Some cities did just that. But often, by the time the commissioners got around to it, Uber had acquired a rabid fan base, which the company wasn’t shy about weaponizing. Amazingly, improbably, Uber broke the taxi commissions — and then broke the people who owned those previously valuable taxi medallions, from individual driver-owners to the operators of taxi fleets.

That was the problem taxi medallions had been designed to solve. Drivers still didn’t make much money, because all you needed to get started in the business was a driver’s license. But the people who owned the right to drive were able to make a tidy living, with almost no downside risk. That’s why New York City taxi medallions got so valuable: Two decades of low-interest rates made them an attractive alternative to bonds offering yields in the low single digits.

Is the point that we should feel sorry for the medallion cartels? If so then I'm not feeling it. Try living in the suburbs of a metro area with a barely functional transit system and then tell me how we're now worse off.

Sounds like a piece from Unions

Death to uber and Lyft. Didn't your parents tell you not to get into cars with strangers.

Filing this under N, for No Shit Sherlock.

Lyft is more reliable than taxi's. I live outside the city core . Taxi drivers often dump their commitment to me for a fare closer by. So many times I've had to all dispatch a few times. Lyft always shows up. I bet I'm not the only one who never calls taxi any longer

Ask Michael Cohen.......

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