Newyork’s current taxi medallion system is failing. Driver-owners can barely meet lease agreements, and the price of medallions is teetering.
The entry of Uber, Lyft and other ridesharing services in Newyork come as a relief to aspiring cab owners and riders. But the city’s taxi industry is taking non of that. They recently engaged this free cabbie market in stormy legal battles.
Of course, the politically affiliated medallion owners got the upper hand. Alluding that everything was okay since 1930 until the ridesharing services arrived. Now, the value of this treasured medallions is plummeting.
There are roughly 13,000 taxi medallions in NewYork, and for a long time, they sold at $1 million and even more. Today, the same medallions are worth less than $200,000. And that has left many owners with steep loans which they cannot afford to service.
This inequity trickles down to riders too and that, in a way, fuels the cycle of debt. However, this problem is not going away soon. The city is tightening taxi regulation again, in an attempt to make a recap after almost running out of business.