Isn't that a good thing? Supply goes up due to demand at a specific price point. So either the supply is increasing to meet demand (which is good), or the price is falling so more quantity is demanded (which is also good).

the limitation is the capacity of the roads, which this is addressing, for New York City.

> the limitation is the capacity of the roads, which this is addressing, for New York City

I live on 26th Street. It used to be two lanes of traffic and two lanes of parking. They redid this to have one lane of bike lanes, one lane of traffic, and kept the two lanes of parking. (You see a similar issue of self-inflicted policymaking at the MTA [1].)

This decision is a handout to medallion owners, who are prolific political donors in this city [2].

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/09/nyregion/subw...

[2] https://nypost.com/2014/05/17/taxi-industry-gave-de-blasio-o...

The means by which they address this works only for the wealthy.

I can afford a $30 yellow cab fare once in a while, but it cannot be the de facto option day to day. The same with congestion pricing -- great...if you're wealthy.

Perhaps the way to address the overuse of the roads might be to fix the reason the are being overused...because subways dont work in NYC anymore

Hi - see my comment here, to save redundancy.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17626412

An oversupply according to whom, the taxi drivers? Given how much eager so many riders were to pick them over cabs, they were obviously supplying something that was missing.

Exactly. An oversupply first according to the City. Where they get their data is a mystery. Or not, considering modern politics...

> An oversupply according to whom

The article raised several negative consequences due to oversupply, which are generally well known. How should we address them?

Regarding the negative effect on taxi drivers, the economic consensus is that this is weaker than the positive effect on consumers. Generally as a society we prefer benefiting consumers over producers, as if all producers had monopolies and no competition, everyone's quality of life would be worse (producers are consumers too). There's a nice work from a few hundred years ago by early French economist Bastiat that explores the issue: http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html.

That aside, their situation could be improved by the same general solution as other unemployment hardships: better welfare or some kind of basic income. This distorts the market less than giving taxi drivers an artificial monopoly and forcing New Yorkers to suffer allegedly sub-par service.

Regarding increased congestion, the standard solution is a congestion charge of some sort, applied equally to all non-critical passenger vehicles. This is what large cities like Shanghai and Singapore do (with massive taxes and/or licensing fees). Just because Uber contributed to the problem most recently, doesn't mean that their usecase is somehow worse than the cars that were already there. Increased use of such services can actually be a positive in the long term, if it reduces the time spent parking and the city's need to waste land on parking spaces, encourages carpooling, or increases quality of life of residents by allowing them to more easily get across the city. Increasing the cost of driving in the city via congestion charges or taxes will cut off the least important use-cases first (those that people are least willing to pay for), which is more efficient than arbitrarily banning ride sharing without data on the value it adds vs existing car usage.

How do you have an oversupply of cabs/Ubers?

There is a certain demand by passengers and cabs/Ubers will meet that demand. If there are too many cabs/Ubers, then they won't make money and will stop driving.

>> The only option was Uber/Lyft

> New Yorkers have relied on cabs for generations before Uber and Lyft.

Subway: 2.75 Uber/Lyft Pool: $17 Yellow Cab: $30++ (depends on how round-about a route they decide to take, often just to make more money)

Uber/Lyft Pool hurt. Yellow cab would be a punch to the gut. Perhaps Uber/Lyft Pool isnt the answer, but i'm evaluating options in the context of what my current available options are, not what they might be in a perfect world.

Plus, they disappear as soon as it is raining and a bunch refuse to take you into Brooklyn (i know they are not allowed to refuse, but what do you do if they refuse, call a lawyer?)

They relied on the subway for generations, too.

Does that mean everything is exactly the same as it once as?