By The Author

New York City — The yellow cab has long symbolized the city that never sleeps. But in just over a decade, Uber and Lyft have dismantled the once-dominant taxi industry, shifting both market share and asset values in ways that still reverberate across Wall Street, city hall, and the streets of Manhattan.

Market Power: The New Incumbents

According to the New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission (TLC), Uber and Lyft now account for nearly four out of every five for-hire rides in the city. Yellow cabs, once the default option, have slipped to around 15% of trips.

The numbers behind the shift are stark. As of late 2024, New York licensed 13,587 medallion cabs versus more than 83,000 Uber/Lyft-affiliated vehicles, a six-to-one ratio.

For consumers, the appeal has been clear: app-based convenience, broader geographic reach, and transparent pricing. For investors, Uber and Lyft’s New York dominance is a showcase of the platform model’s scalability in high-density urban markets.

Medallion Collapse: From Million-Dollar Assets to Distressed Debt

The transformation gutted the value of taxi medallions, once considered one of the city’s safest investments. Prices peaked above $1 million in 2013, only to plunge to $79,000 by 2021 as ride-hail firms scaled up.

The collapse triggered a debt crisis among owner-drivers, with foreclosures, bankruptcies, and even suicides drawing national headlines. In 2021, New York City brokered a landmark debt relief plan with lenders, capping medallion loans at roughly $170,000 to stabilize the sector.

Although medallions have rebounded modestly—averaging $137,000 in 2022—they remain a fraction of their former worth, a cautionary tale for investors in regulated monopoly assets disrupted by technology.

Regulatory Reset: From Scarcity to Scale

Uber and Lyft’s legal classification as High-Volume For-Hire Services (HVFHS) has reshaped the city’s regulatory priorities. Instead of managing medallion scarcity, the TLC now focuses on:

• Driver pay floors to ensure minimum earnings.
• Vehicle utilization rules to manage congestion.
• Accessibility mandates, requiring wheelchair-accessible and EV adoption.

For Uber and Lyft, regulation now functions less as a barrier and more as a cost of doing business at scale. Their compliance costs are substantial, but so is their leverage: New York is too large a market for either platform to exit.

The Investor Angle

• Uber (NYSE: UBER) has made New York a flagship market, with ride-hail economics contributing to its recent profitable quarters. Investors view NYC’s model as a template for high-density urban strategy.
• Lyft (NASDAQ: LYFT), while trailing in market share, maintains a critical presence in New York to retain scale against its larger rival.
• Medallions, once a retirement nest egg, are now speculative distressed assets. Debt restructuring stabilized the market, but few expect values to return anywhere near their peaks.

What’s Next

The yellow cab is not disappearing. It retains exclusive rights to street hails, a visible brand, and a nostalgic cachet that Uber and Lyft cannot replicate. But the broader trajectory is clear: the medallion era has ended, and app-based mobility platforms now define the city’s for-hire future.

For policymakers, the challenge is managing congestion and labor protections. For investors, it is a reminder that disruption does not just shift consumer behavior—it rewrites the value of entire asset classes.

In New York, the disruption is no longer hypothetical. It’s parked at the curb, waiting for the next app ping.