You don't understand the dynamic of medallions in SF. Medallions in SF are owned only by taxi drivers, not by cab companies. You must drive a cab 800 hours pe

You don't understand the dynamic of medallions in SF. Medallions in SF are owned only by taxi drivers, not by cab companies. You must drive a cab 800 hours per year in order to own a medallion. You can't own multiple medallions. Taxi fleets, in SF, provide vehicles, dispatch services, insurance, and maintenance, as well as basically being intermediaries for medallions. Driver-owners with medallions rent their medallions to the fleet, who then hand them out to their drivers who are not owners, to give them the legal right to act as a taxi for that shift. The fleets get revenue (typically) through gate fees, which is basically a fee each driver pays when they take the vehicle off the lot. You do not have to sign up to get a medallion in order to be a fleet -- nor can you own a medallion. You'd need to either attract several medallioned drivers to your fleet (hardly impossible: make them a better offer than their current fleet -- they aren't owners or otherwise locked into their existing fleet), or, perhaps better if you want to make a big entrance into the market quickly, buy out one of the existing fleets and continue its arrangement with its medallioned drivers. I take no position on whether it would have been a good idea for Uber or Lyft to do something like this -- I'm just saying that there is not a mandatory 10 year waiting period or anything.