Mayor de Blasio isn’t done fighting Uber — yet it’s already clear he’ll lose his war to protect his donors from the yellow-cab industry.
Uber’s just the cutting edge of a wave of change that will continue eating away at medallion taxis’ share of the market. They may not be headed the way of horse-drawn hansoms, but their future’s not bright.
The key point: To build up their own business, the city’s black-car companies are going the app route, too — many of them teaming up to match the fleet size that helps make Uber so convenient.
Uber has some 20,000 cars in the five boroughs; at least one black-car-app alliance has around 10,000. Its drivers even have at least one advantage over Uber: They take cash.
Public opinion last month forced the mayor to drop his push to freeze the growth of Uber’s fleet, but plans are still afoot to slam it in other ways.
The most able is a drive to outlaw (or at least limit) its “surge pricing” practice, which hikes fares at times of high demand. That interference may meet with less public anger than de Blasio’s Plan A — but it won’t do a thing to undercut Uber’s other benefits, from cleaner cars to greater convenience.
And even if the mayor somehow drives Uber out of town, the “app revolution” is here to stay, giving consumers an option for rapid service besides street-hailing a taxi.
Even “progressives” can’t stop progress.