As other commenters noted, medallions were (are) intended as an exclusive license to pick up street fares/hails. For many years before Uber existed, a separate

As other commenters noted, medallions were (are) intended as an exclusive license to pick up street fares/hails. For many years before Uber existed, a separate class of service called "for-hire vehicles" (FHVs), commonly known as black cars or Town Cars, existed and doesn't seem to have been part of the medallion exclusivity (at least in NYC). Here's the closest I could find to a primary source documenting the difference between a medallion and a black car in NYC: http://www.nyc.gov/html/tlc/html/industry/for_hire.shtml http://www.nyc.gov/html/tlc/html/industry/for_hire.shtml (see related links from that page). At least based on what I can find on the NYC Taxi & Limousine Commission site, the TLC never required that FHVs use a central base/dispatch, and even clarified in 2015 that a central dispatch/base was not required (http://www.nyc.gov/html/tlc/downloads/pdf/newly_passed_rule_fhv_dispatch.pdf http://www.nyc.gov/html/tlc/downloads/pdf/newly_passed_rule_...). If this assessment is accurate, that is (a) medallion owners never had exclusivity for prearranged rides and (b) a central base isn't required, then as soon as smartphones were everywhere (and thus almost all rides were easier to prearrange in an app), medallion demand was eventually going to drop. Medallion owners didn't realize that they legitimately competed with any new methods of prearranging a ride, including smartphone apps -- their competition wasn't black cars, it was prearranged rides. If Uber hadn't created the market, a black car operator probably would have eventually. Presumably they'd have started with existing FHV drivers (as Uber did when it was UberCab), but the NYC FHV requirements are straightforward enough that they could have recruited and licensed new drivers as demand grew (https://nyc.drivewithvia.com/get-a-tlc-fhv-license/ https://nyc.drivewithvia.com/get-a-tlc-fhv-license/, https://dmv.ny.gov/driver-license/get-license-drive-taxi-or-livery-vehicle https://dmv.ny.gov/driver-license/get-license-drive-taxi-or-...). (And to play out the medallion exclusivity: if a new, improved method of ride hailing was created, medallion owners would have exclusively benefited. If you've seen a taxi line/taxi hub serving multiple hotels in a downtown business district, one could call that an innovation which made hailing more competitive. Imagine if taxis had installed tiny kiosks with taxi call buttons and self-service credit card readers throughout the city, and guaranteed a taxi would be there in 2 minutes after a fare swiped.)