Problem with this is that city centres don't want the traffic and will look to cap ride hailing and shift people to public and active transportation options.

NYC has already enacted legislation capping new licenses for PHVs

No need to limit it to city centers. Raise prices, throttle driver recruitment, and the market will adjust accordingly. More locations will naturally lack the density of a healthy driver and passenger network.

> throttle driver recruitment

maybe they could have uber drivers buy shiny medallions at a moderate cost, but then limit the supply of those medallions per market? drivers could sell their medallions for market value.

Underrated comment.

Sometimes, we disrupt a business, but fail to disrupt the underlying market forces that shaped the business in the first place.

I suspect that until we have robo-taxis, uber and Lyft can displace the existing taxi companies by being new and high-tech, but in the end they have the same market forces acting on their availability and pricing that act on taxi companies.

So they will wind up being the new taxi companies.

Taxi medallions weren't imposed by market forces.

This ^. Taxi medallions were the opposite of letting market forces do their work.

How come Uber is profitable in these areas and Lyft isn't? Market share?

Precisely. It's all about scale

Scale of what? Most of their costs are per-unit.

SWEs don't get paid on a per-ride basis.

Uber doesn't count their R&D costs in their (dodgy and unquantified) claims to be profitable in this or that market.

Out of curiosity, and having done no research myself, where do you get those numbers about NY and SF? I’m assuming they’re not public info published by Uber.