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One thing that's usually missing in discussions of New York taxi medallions is how congested the city is and how many of the vehicles on the street (especially
by cynicalkane 14y ago
One thing that's usually missing in discussions of New York taxi medallions is how congested the city is and how many of the vehicles on the street (especially in Manhattan) at any given time are taxis. Once a certain point is reached, adding taxis will increase the travel times of taxigoers.
There's been economic analyses of this. I don't recall too many details about the optimal number of taxis (it's probably higher than the current number), nor are taxi medallions a particularly effective way of regulating congestion, but surely bald deregulation is not optimal.
- mrkurt 14y agoThe most irritating thing about the number of taxis on the streets is how many of them aren't allowed to pick up passengers at any given time. It's amazingly annoying to have empty-taxi after empty-taxi fly by without picking you up...
- glenra 14y ago> surely bald deregulation is not optimal. "optimal" is not one of our options. The relevant question is whether "bald deregulation" is better than what we've got now, and the answer to that is pretty obviously YES. Sadly, "bald deregulation" is also not one of our options, but at least it's more likely than achieving something anywhere near "optimal".