It's hard to say that's "all it takes" when the actual Mayor of New York City had a huge fight on his hands just to wrench a tiny amount of power away from the medallion owners: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/nyregion/bloomberg-plan-to...

I don't understand it. The taxi industry is a huge and powerful lobby which manages to twist the law in its favour in just about every first-world city on Earth. I don't know how they do it, but they do.

Melbourne Airport is on the outer fringe of the city and there's always a push to get public transport to the airport, in the form of light rail - a taxi to the CBD is north of $30, from memory. The land is there, the public support is there, but the taxi lobby keeps killing it every time. I've never understood where they get their power from.

Now you know. From Medallion holders.

They use custom license plates instead of medallions, but the effect is the same. I think a set of Melbourne taxi plates goes for around $500k these days - a quick search just found "a bargain - 485k!".

I really don't see where that much value is, beyond blocking potential competitors from the market.

The State of NY can veto pretty much anything the City of New York decides to do. Right now a bill to reform the livery car business to allow street hails outside of Manhattan is sitting in Albany.

There are small towns across the US whose mayors have more power than the mayor and council of NYC.