New York Could Become First Major U.S. City to Cap Uber and Similar Vehicles
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
- They're frequently rude and unaccountable. They'll talk with friends on speaker (car speaker) and you can't rate them.
- Oh, sorry sir. Can't go to Brooklyn. Grumble grumble.
- Smells, garbage and other horrors on the back seat. Why bother cleaning it when you're a monopoly?
- Road rage, dangerous driving, etc. that requires a more complicated TLC complaint while Uber and Lyft let you do it over the app.
Want people to take less car services? Fix the subway and buses.
Passing new restrictions to protect medallion owners (not the drivers) is similar to the way they killed Airbnb here in that it lets the Council pander to those who paid to play, while simultaneously couching the exercise in some moralistic greater good. [edit: Friday-afternoon-inspired run-on sentence repair]
It is a simple act, requiring only your eyes and a working arm, and you can go anywhere in the city. It can also be challenging, but over time you start figuring out and mapping to memory the best places to hail cabs going in your direction, you start learning the fastest routes through different areas at various times of day. Mastering the cab experience is part of what makes living here fun, while adding some meaning to the "achievement" of NYC "experience."
How you describe the situation seems quite exaggerated, to say the least. I'm reserved to say that you are intentionally presenting a biased or agenda-driven description here, as you may very well have had a horrible run of luck, or you may just have higher personal standard, so I'm just going to throw in my experience as a counter-point.
-I've never had a cabbie that was any ruder than what you are likely to experience from any person living and working in this city at any time. Part of living in NYC is "learning to deal" with lots of different people of every type of temperament and attitude. I could also care less that I "can't rate them." I think this obsession with rating people for basic services is an alienating force in society. They are a driver to get me to point B. Go on reddit and downvote somebody or finish writing that really vicious Yelp review you've been mulling over if you need your need to get your fix "rating" someone.
- I can't remember the last time I had a cabbie refuse service to Brooklyn, or anywhere for that matter. 8 years ago? The green cabs that came around ~4-5 years ago were a godsend for the borroughs. I have had hailed (green) cabs tell me to get out as soon as I got in because they got booked by a friggin Uber fair with surge pricing as I was opening the door...
- The only reason I struggle with cabs now is because they are disappearing, which is a result of Uber/Lyft domination. Everything changed for the worse following the arrival of Uber/Lyft, for cab drivers and non-Uber users/cab lovers. Dramatically so, the last couple of years.
-I've definitely had problems with smelly drivers once or twice, but not so much garbage. I certainly can't think of even a single instance where I have been presented by what I would describe as "horrors."
If I were describing the situation realistically rather than with hypercritically, it seems, for the most part, basic human decency keeps people from leaving trash in the cars in the first place, with the driver's self-respect and the desire for a better tip covering the rest. The experience is adequately clean and professional.
I know from talking to cabbies, who generally seem to be more social and socialable in a NY kind of way than Uber/Lyft automatons, that things have been pretty rough for them, and I remember one convo in particular with a cabbie who was not optimistic about my ability to hail cabs a year or two from now, at all.
NYC cabs are a cultural institution, especially the analog aspect of hailing a cab using physical gestures is what I am saying, and it seems people are quite over-eager to basically throw that away.
It is likely Uber would have thrived on the merits of its premium features and conveniences, but it should have had to do it on a level playing field, some way or another. I have no sympathy for Uber or Lyft if the rug gets pulled out from under them. I also have no sympathy for NYC bureaucracy and the situation they have created. I do feel bad for the people who got screwed for playing by well-established, long-standing rules.
Overall, I could care less what happens to Uber or medallion owners, but I would like to preserve the iconic experience that is the ability to walk out into the dark streets, scan the roads for a vehicle with a small white light on top, wave my arm in the air for a bit, tell my new driver friend my destination, and go.
IIRC, Uber/Lyft have shown objective data highlighting the improvements of service to disadvantaged communities and groups.
Taxis aren't at risk of going away entirely any time soon, so the iconic experience should still be around.
Its a terrible industry. Ive seen taxis not pick up people due to their color. They all change shift at the same time. They don’t work in the rain. The driver frequently isn’t the guy in the picture. To complain you have to show up at a hearing during work hours.
Good riddance!
And I also find it frustrating that publications like the NYT won't call these politicians on their bullshit and prefer to write completely uncritical articles now that Uber is unpopular.
Seriously, everything about yellow cab service is worse. Why don’t they buy back the medallions instead?
The cabbies have gotten the short end of the stick though.
So otherwise hopeless drivers/single medallion owners who are severely in debt don't end up committing mass suicide.
There are so many avenues for them to relieve themselves from this burden and better their circumstances that you'd be hard-pressed to take any claims of mass-suicide seriously.
Most economists are in agreement that dramatically increasing the cost of owning property (And, conversely, lowering the market value of existing properties) is one of the answers to the current housing crisis. Once the rules are changed, the free market can figure things out going forward!
Are you going to cheer this process on? It will, after all, greatly improve life for people who don't have millions of dollars to pour into housing.
except taxis aren't currently a free market, and definitely weren't when many of those medallions were originally purchased. the government shouldn't have been mucking with the market, but it did.
Most medallions are owned by corporate owners [1]. The drivers work for the medallion owner. The medallion owner collects rent.
I think 29%, 12,187 * .29 ~ 3500 cab drivers, is not insignificant numbers. I don't know though anyone who owns their own medallions -- a few I knew worked for a company that leased their medallions and they paid something like $1000 per week.
1. Cabbie turning off his meter right before my stop, then quoting me a price that was x3 times the meter when I last caught glimpse of it.
2. Cabbies flat out refusing to accept credit cards. Forcing me to withdraw cash on an ATM to pay them.
3. Cabbies rudely demanding tip after being rude and inconsiderate the whole ride.
There's a reason why Uber/Lyft are so popular. Yellow Cabs in NYC were never a pleasant experience, and all too often - an awful one.
Dump all taxi drivers into the same market as this guy and they'll have to improve or be pushed out of business when they get too many "1 star: tried to defraud me" reviews.
Maybe we need an app that lets us photograph the legally mandated ID card so we can collectively leave reviews. But even then it's too late. You're already in the cab.
I typically travel for business, so I don't care about the price so much. Uber/Lyft are great because they provide a much better experience.
I hate cabs because of all the friction: rude drivers imposing their personal preferences upon me, often illegally.
The biggest improvement Uber introduced is accountability for drivers. Efficiency improved too, and reduced the price. But if you look at the comments here and in TFA, a lot of them are about service quality. Most of the worst offenses, like refusing to accept credit cards, are illegal. But the city has done a terrible job of enforcing it, so cab service has been terrible for decades.
Then came Uber and Lyft and finally brought service that people love. So the city tries to take them down. Just like SF is harassing successful companies with bizarre new rules and regulations, such as banning cafeterias.
It would really be nice if there were a standard API and naming system so that a global hierarchical registration system could be used by any application speaking that standard to provide the functionality presently provided by Lyft and Uber.
I see the offers of water bottles and gum as expressions of desperation in the face of precarity: a 4.6 average will get you fired from Uber (https://therideshareguy.com/10-things-that-can-get-you-deact...). I want good service, which means a driver that does his job well, not a driver that makes me cringe because he feels pressured to humiliate himself in a performative display of over-the-top customer service.
4/5 stars in a movie is pretty great. 4/5 stars in an Uber is, for some nonsensical reason, abysmal. What's the point of having 1-3 at all at that point?
Moreover, they will ask you for the rating several days later if you don't take frequent rides and open the app again. Unless it was terrible, I probably don't remember the details.
He's doing that because a small amount of ratings, however fickle or unfair, can make or break his ability to make money while driving for Uber.
Most of the drivers out there don't own their own medallion, they just pay a lease fee to the medallion owner.
Why? Let the free market take care of it.
This isn't exclusively a protectionist issue. It is an anti-congestion issue.
De Blasio is also significantly backed by the taxi industry [1].
[1] https://nypost.com/2014/05/17/taxi-industry-gave-de-blasio-o...
I went to NYC last weekend and, just like the previous 7 times i went there, subways weren't running normally after-hours (growing up, it functioned well 24-7). This time (last weekend) no subways were running to where I needed to go. The only option was Uber/Lyft. It took me ~$17 instead of the $2.75 for the subway, but I was just glad to have some means of transportation.
Removing Uber/Lyft is a bad idea. But removing Uber/Lyft without first fixing the mass transit system is insane.
New Yorkers have relied on cabs for generations before Uber and Lyft.
> Removing Uber/Lyft is a bad idea
They aren't removing them, just regulating the number of cars, of which there is an oversupply: the number of for-hire vehicles in the city has surged, rising to more than 100,000 vehicles, from about 63,000 in 2015, according to the city.
The article raised several negative consequences due to oversupply, which are generally well known. How should we address them?
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.
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.
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...
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
Does that mean everything is exactly the same as it once as?
> 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?)
On the way back, it was even worse:
PICTURE EVIDENCE: https://imgur.com/a/p4JCaPP
EVIDENCE NOTE 1: Monitor claiming F trains would arrive
EVIDENCE NOTE 2: Sign contracting what monitor says
EVIDENCE NOTE 3: Monitor and Sign side-by-side
I used the MTA Subway Time app and it claimed F trains were on their way, these were obviously schedule data and werent changed despite the weekend-long outage. So if you used the MTA Subway Time, you'd wait forever.
I used the Google Pigeon app to report it. Given the official app had fake arrival times, best to use (or in this case, to contribute to) a crowd-sourced data source based on reality.
Haven't lived in NYC for more than a decade, it's a shame to hear how far downhill the subway has gone.
Watching communities vote down protected bike lines because they lose 1-2 parking spaces per block (I'm looking at you, Sunnyside) or fight increased bus service (the village..) is very frustrating.
Department of Transportation thankfully is expanding bikeshare services to areas currently not covered by Citibike: https://twitter.com/NYC_DOT/status/1017803095491973125
The trains and subways in Tokyo are amazing, clean, on time but they stop at 1am and start up around 5am. That sucks for you if you don't want to cab it home after around 12am. As a night owl I love it though as it means there are tons of night venues that are open until at least 5am and I just add the cab fare into my "entertainment budget" if I don't intend to stay out all night.
The streets are not crowded between 1am and 5am so night busses make a lot of sense. Then of course you can do scheduled maintenance on the subways.
> just add the cab fare into my "entertainment budget"
This sounds OK, but now think about the working class who have to get to work, or work night shift (at those bars where you're going), or work on weekends, or night school, etc. They cant just take cabs all the time. Uber/Lyft pool has been an expensive but somewhat reachable stop-gap but yellow cabs, especially to far-off outer boroughs where working class live is simply untenable.
Unlike Paris, there is a bit of a different "social contract" in NYC where generations of working class have depended upon, come to expect, and carved their lives/jobs around the expectation of a 24-7 subway system...often not for convenience but for sustenance.
If you care about congestion, address congestion. As much as I would like to support Mr Mayor, I find it difficult to do so. This mayor points the finger at Mr Governor and the state legislature -- rightly so I assume about 99% of the time. However, this last one percent is what grinds my gears. There is not a lot that the city can do on its own but this isn't something they can't fix.
I think the correct answer is to enforce existing traffic laws and strengthening them where necessary. Traffic violation? Suspend their TLC license at the first offense. Ideally, there would be no additional cost to the driver. The TLC license is simply suspended for a short period of time (lets say three months). At the end of three months, the driver can apply to be reinstated at no cost (assuming no further violations -- by which I mean no Uber or Lyft work -- during this time).
Now the important part: actually enforce this. This is the difficult part because I frequently see cars with a reflective vest in front of the steering wheel (which I assume is supposed to signify the car belongs to a police officer?). I think it is difficult to ask for strict enforcement of traffic laws when even the police officers so blatantly disregard traffic laws.
New York Times reports ridership on the MTA and MTA bus is stagnating at best or likely declining. In another world, I would be advocating for turning many of the existing bus lines into subway lines (at least here in Queens) because as someone else commented a few months back, a bus every three minutes is no longer a bus but a very expensive train.
In any case, I thought there was a solution coming in the form of congestion tax in New York City. What happened of it?
Seriously, all this city needs is "broken windows" policing for traffic violations.
There's more. They reclassified numerous crimes that were deemed quality of life crimes that deserve at most a desk ticket. They also stopped cracking down on turnstile jumpers, they became more lax with the homeless by policy (you can read DeBlasio's quotes on that too).
There's a general Zeitgeist against policing in general. Is it good, moral social justice policy? I don't know, but I strongly suspect we care more about equality of outcome (and statistics) than true justice.
Back to the cameras. There's a terrible irony here: the police union was instrumental in pressuring to not renew them. Fear of being automated out of a job? That's a strong HN topic if I ever saw one.
I am still waiting on Germany to make mass transit "free of cost" or paid for completely by tax payers. I think we can learn a lot from their experiment. What worries me here in the US is that everything costs so much more. I think I will be salty until the day I die about the WTC Path terminal being 100% over budget. I mean those FOUR BILLION DOLLARS I think would be better spent toward the second avenue train for the MTA or the signal problem on the Newark WTC Path bridge at Harrison (Disclaimer: I use neither of those two services but I still think either of those would have been a better choice.) I don't know the details but I think we ought to walk away from a bad deal at some point. If we are sure we can control costs, I am all for a fully taxpayer funded MTA subway and buses as well as a fully taxpayer funded Path train. I hope people understand that $2.75 does not fully cover the cost of a bus ride. I don't have any numbers but as someone mentioned here some time ago there is a lot of taxpayer money already going into building and maintaining the roads.
> Back to the cameras. There's a terrible irony here: the police union was instrumental in pressuring to not renew them. Fear of being automated out of a job? That's a strong HN topic if I ever saw one.
The main thing is we have to be willing to cut costs. Everything I say is a pipe dream until we can cut costs. This means automating as much as possible. This includes train conductors, bus drivers, and yes, the police (and the administrative staff at all these places).
Feels like a chicken and egg problem, right?
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/19/nyregion/mayor-congestion...
The number of TLC cars has skyrocketed recently. Which, in many important ways, is a good thing. But this is a crowded city, literally everything that is at risk of runaway growth in this city is regulated, and for good reason, all the way down to hot dog carts.
This city could rapidly be unlivable otherwise. The growth of TLC cars has created obvious problems, they are often oblivious to their surroundings, blocking streets while they stare at the screen trying to find a pickup, creating localized congestion, etc.
I'm not sure if a numerical limit is the answer, or geographic restrictions, or who knows, but what it sounds like is the city is starting to think about it. Good.
It was because the death by a thousand cuts of incremental regulation left such a gaping hole between the crappy service being provided and the end users' needs that people were open to the idea of using a completely unregulated, clearly illegal service instead.
We've had TLC cars for decades, aka black cars, car service cars, livery cars, etc. Taxis were never the only game in town, livery cars have been an integral part of the city's transportation network for a lot longer than Uber. I have pretty clear memories of the line outside Northside in Williamsburg every weekend night 15 years ago when I lived there.
What happened was we all got little GPS enabled devices in our pocket so instead of having to call or wait at a storefront car service spot we could arrange it all in seconds. Way better, to be sure. But in NYC Uber hasn't really changed the legal framework like it's tried to do elsewhere, it's mostly just a better way to hail and track them. And the pool thing changes the dynamics somewhat as well.
Which is great and all. But we don't have an unregulated illegal car service thing here, or to the extent we do it's unrelated to Uber. New York's TLC has regulated for-hire cars for a long long time and still do.
Ironically, the Mayor wants to hand out more cart licenses, and he's already handed 5000 more parking passes for City employees.
The current administration is fragile when it comes to demands of their sponsors. Medallion owners and the hotel industry are two such sponsors (Airbnb crackdown).
I dislike yellow cabs as much as the next guy but street space is definitely a limited resource and not being regulated in a healthy manner.
So, those 100k for higher vehicles make up a large fraction of total vehicles on the streets. Further, congestion charges would need to be per hour on the road not just in the city to adjust for this issue.
No, they spend 10+ hours parked on two sides of my narrow street.
It baffles me how much of the most expensive real estate on earth is dedicated to free car storage.
People who park their cars go to town halls. They turn out to vote. They call their representatives.
I called my City Councilman, who is also the Speaker proposing this bill, and was apparently the first person to call in opposition. Everyone else focussed on how Uber is a den of sexual harassment and it's about time we did something about them. If that is the balance, this bill is good politics. Even if it's counterproductive.
It's not "good politics" if influence is only available to the affluent.
Individually, humans are really bad at judging these things and you cannot have optimal traffic and congestion control without some measure of centralized management of incentives.
Nobody wins when all car traffic is slower than optimal and driving just becomes an objectively worse experience for everyone on the road.
You realize that the roads are property right? They're owned by the city. They're funded by the tax payers. Are you telling me they are obligated to share their roads for free?
I simply cannot fathom how someone who is advocating a "free market" solution doesn't understand the important role that property rights play in a market system.
I realize you want free access to the roads, but who says you're entitled to free access? You don't own the roads. I don't care if your tax dollars pay for them, you're not entitled to drive on them just like you're not entitled to roam around on a military base.
If I owned the roads, you bet your ass I'd charge you an arm and a leg to ride on my roads. I would do whatever I could to maximize revenue. This means getting as many paying customers on my roads as possible.
Let's say I owned 10th, 6th and 3rd Avenues and series of cross streets. I could be a conventional thinker and simply turn them into premium express lanes for car services and the wealthy, but that's peanuts.
I could make a lot more money if I turned them into efficient roadways for a fast bus service that's competitive with the MTA. I'd try to make my roadways the fastest and most efficient way to get around the city so I could charge as much as I could to make a profit. For less capital investment, I could get better coverage of the city at a fraction of the price of the subway system.
Who gives a shit if cabbies and people from New Jersey can't drive on my road for free? It's my road! Why should I let your crappy car drive on my roads when I can pack far more customers in my driver-less buses?
If you want a free market solution, then let companies buy/lease the roads. Your solution is not a free market solution. It gives away access to the roads at the tax payer's expense, so taxi/car companies can leach off it. You've socialized the costs and privatized the gains.
Stop telling tax payers what they can and can't do with their roads. It's their roads and they don't owe you shit.
The problem is, this affects poor people disproportionately. Your starbucks barista in Manhattan likely does not live in Manhattan. As a cool map by citylab[1] shows, people in low-rent areas that work in Manhattan overwhelmingly drive. Save some miracle involving housing prices, it's hard to levy a consumption-based tax that isn't regressive based on income.
Really, the best solution here would be provide alternatives that suck less than driving 2 hours in New York City traffic - then people would stop driving all on their own.
[1] https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2016/09/manhattan-com...
You could allow income-based discounts, either retroactively by refund (with receipts + tax return) or prospectively (if you have pre-registered accounts) or by a combination (e.g., if your income for the year qualified you for a higher discount than the advance registration info indicated, you can file for a refund.)
This is obviously potentially operationally more expensive in the general case, but for a congestion charge you are going to want to push people to personal accounts and toll tags anyway to minimize toll delays, so most of the infrastructure will already be there to support both prospective and retrospective discounts.
Most of the red dots on that map are in Bergen and Rockland county. The concentration of red dots just above the George Washington bridge is where Chris Rock lives. My friend's hockey teammate lives there too. He owns a hedge fund and has his own hockey rink in his backyard.
I'm not saying everyone driving into the city is a millionaire, but they're not working at Starbucks. You'll need a much better job to afford living in Bergen and Rockland county.
> Really, the best solution here would be provide alternatives that suck less than driving 2 hours in New York City traffic - then people would stop driving all on their own.
We have those alternatives. They work pretty well, and the result has been that most people don't drive into the city. This is old news here. You don't have to sell people on not driving into the city, most abhor the idea. Look at the map again. Most use trains and buses.
In the map, you'll sometimes see clusters of red squares where people normally take buses. Some neighborhoods are more likely to use dollar vans and other unofficial shuttles.
If you are taking the bus from New Jersey, you're not sitting in the same traffic as the cars. In the morning, a long parade of buses flow into the Port Authority terminal in their own lanes.
Like most people here, I'm all about expanding mass transit whether it be trains or buses. People shouldn't have to rely on car services like taxis or Uber/Lyft when buses and shuttles could be a fast & cheaper alternative.
The bottom line is metro areas should take control of their roads and put them to more efficient use. Getting around on the subway is pretty good, but buses could be a fast alternative if certain streets and avenues were marked transit only.
I say this as someone who hates hiring a car (because they make me motion sick), but if you have to be somewhere on time, even with the congestion, hiring a car is more likely to get you there on time.
NYC also has no power over the state defunding the subway system (which it did far more than NYC).
NYC is dealing with problems with powers it has.
Uber and Lyft are big enough that they might be able to make deals with regional or national operators for flat-rate on-demand parking if that's what they need.
What is the congestion argument? How about all these people that make SoHo a living nightmare trying to get through the Holland Tunnel at 5pm? I don't think any of those are Ubers.
I find the apps to be incredibly useful outside of Manhattan, and especially when I'm traveling to other cities, but in Manhattan I've nearly stopped using them.
The obvious, market-based approach is that businesses bid for street capacity (and greenhouse gas emission capacity, but that's a different political issue), to shift the costs from an externality born by the public to the people consuming the resource, the businesses. If I understand correctly, that is how medallions work (it's funny how ideas suddenly make sense when you come to them on your own). But maybe there are more modern solutions: Remember Bloomberg proposed congestion pricing; I oppose that because it distributes a public good, the public streets and transportation, to citizens unequally based on ability to pay. However, if we think of congestion pricing as dynamically priced medallions, that seems like a more efficient solution for businesses who are consuming public goods. It also would seem to make the market more open; rather than long term reservations of capacity (medallions), anyone can buy in at any time; on the other hand, that might discourage long-term investment.
Very interesting way to frame the issue; thanks. Do you know where I could read more about that?
NYC: we feel your pain, but spare us a thought as we suffer without any Uber at all, and only the dimmest prospect of ever having Uber, let alone an adequate number of cabs.
When will the state start to focus on fixing problems instead of regulating solutions?
There's already a basic mechanism already in place. It's called supply and demand.
Here's the closest I could find to a primary source documenting the difference between a medallion and a black car in NYC: http://www.nyc.gov/html/tlc/html/industry/for_hire.shtml (see related links from that page).
At least based on what I can find on the NYC Taxi & Limousine Commission site, the TLC never required that FHVs use a central base/dispatch, and even clarified in 2015 that a central dispatch/base was not required (http://www.nyc.gov/html/tlc/downloads/pdf/newly_passed_rule_...).
If this assessment is accurate, that is (a) medallion owners never had exclusivity for prearranged rides and (b) a central base isn't required, then as soon as smartphones were everywhere (and thus almost all rides were easier to prearrange in an app), medallion demand was eventually going to drop. Medallion owners didn't realize that they legitimately competed with any new methods of prearranging a ride, including smartphone apps -- their competition wasn't black cars, it was prearranged rides. If Uber hadn't created the market, a black car operator probably would have eventually.
Presumably they'd have started with existing FHV drivers (as Uber did when it was UberCab), but the NYC FHV requirements are straightforward enough that they could have recruited and licensed new drivers as demand grew (https://nyc.drivewithvia.com/get-a-tlc-fhv-license/, https://dmv.ny.gov/driver-license/get-license-drive-taxi-or-...).
(And to play out the medallion exclusivity: if a new, improved method of ride hailing was created, medallion owners would have exclusively benefited. If you've seen a taxi line/taxi hub serving multiple hotels in a downtown business district, one could call that an innovation which made hailing more competitive. Imagine if taxis had installed tiny kiosks with taxi call buttons and self-service credit card readers throughout the city, and guaranteed a taxi would be there in 2 minutes after a fare swiped.)