It was on their TV show The Weekly as well. very good article and very good show.
The TLC is screwing the drivers, but no one is forcing them to take out a $750,000-$1M loan for a medallion!
No, of course not.
But what New York City did was assure those owner/operators that the medallion was worth that much, because it gave them an exclusive right to pick up fares on the streets of the city.
But the city allowed people who weren’t ever going to drive a cab to speculate in medallions as if they were a commodity, thus driving the price up. Then it turned around and granted the same right to pick up fares Uber and Lyft, thus instantly reducing the value of the medallions to nothing.
Rightly or wrongly, taxis are a regulated industry. Then Uber comes along & sidesteps that regulation to create a competing business. I could get somewhere a lot faster if I didn’t need to worry about those pesky speed limits & traffic lights & I’d be a lot richer if I didn’t need to worry about those silly bank robbery laws. :rolleyes:
On top of that, I don’t believe a majority of the part-timers understand how badly their cars are getting beat up & how much depreciation to apply & how much sooner their car will wear out because of the pittance they’re making when they subtract from the $x they’re making in a night the probably-significant portion of their income that should be allocated towards a new vehicle fund. After all, if it was a lucrative industry do you think the majority of taxis would be beat up former police cars, which are always a base model vehicle with maybe only beefed up suspension & bigger motors.