Taxi companies are basically legalized mafias everywhere in the world.

If any industry deserved to be disrupted it was theirs.

Check New York City's taxi medallions...

NYC’s medallions did have a primary purpose; to control traffic.

Manhattan is tiny and taxis represent an outsize amount of traffic since they don’t park most of the day like a commuter car. Uber’s proliferation was associated with a general decline in traffic speeds.

But increasing throughput. Given how shitty US public transport is in general, maybe that's the right tradeoff. New York is one of the best, but still shitty by EU standards.

> New York is one of the best, but still shitty by EU standards.

If we're talking about concrete things like throughput, the MTA is one of only a few systems with round-the-clock operation, and I don't think anywhere else matches its scale and reach.

The filth of the stations are a legitimate complaint...but given that my primary interest is my transit system moving me from place to place, I'd take it over the majority of EU systems in a heartbeat.

The system is great, when all services are in good condition.

This is fairly rare, particularly on weekends or nights.

I just recently visited NYC for a week after a few years away. Got in mid-week and was taking the subway around during the day, and thought wow it's really made huge improvements in reliability recently. Trains were all coming quickly and all lines were running. Then the weekend came around and half the lines were being re-routed and waits were much longer with lots of announced delays.

The city does a good job, especially by US standards, of making public transit a reliable, affordable way for people to go to and from work. But as far as getting around in day to day life outside of rush hour it is much worse and there's still a big need for Taxis or Uber. And I think with the increase in remote work recently this is more of an issue now than ever.

I do have to say I'm impressed by the Apple pay/NFC payment rollout though. No more flimsy Metrocards to worry about swiping and refilling is a nice improvement.

In effect this is indentured servitude. Most people are not aware how common paying to be allowed to start a business is in Europe. For instance, I was told by a restaurant owner in Rome that you have to pay 500,000 euros to the landowning catholic church to open a tiny restaurant storefront there. This is structured as a loan.