> That’s because New York is corrupt and artificially limits both ride shares and taxis. It is both desirable and definitely within the purview of government t

> That’s because New York is corrupt and artificially limits both ride shares and taxis. It is both desirable and definitely within the purview of government to control the number of vehicles on the road. Congestion/traffic is a perfect example of an externality. Go to a megacity in a developing country like Delhi and experience traffic that causes what would be a 20 minute trip with 0 traffic to become a 4 hour trip in traffic. Given the traffic/congestion externality, taxing/charging vehicles to enter downtowns, creating a cap on the number of taxis via medallions, etc are all the economically optimal solutions according to economics. We want to substitute individual vehicle transport to mass transit wherein there is a dramatically reduced externality (e.g. adding a person to a subway train or a bus only has an effect if that train hits capacity -- in contrast to adding an additional vehicle to the road). Ideally, the pricing model for ridesharing and taxis should be dynamic but account for the congestion impacts (i.e. internalize the traffic externality). The fixed pricing of taxis doesn't do this (though medallions partly do from a more traditional cap and trade scheme) and the surge pricing of Uber and Lyft is only to clear their internal market and not to resolve the traffic impacts of all those additional vehicles on the road. As such, there have been numerous peer reviewed papers that have demonstrated that traffic is actually increased by ridesharing due to a substitution away from mass transit.