AutoMarketplace is a distribution partner for Commissioner’s Corner, the recurring column from the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission (NYC TLC) Chair.

As we mark the 25^th anniversary of the September 11 attacks on our city, it’s worth remembering a little-known and largely unreported event that took place in the days immediately afterwards, as our city was still reeling from unimaginable loss: Dozens of drivers began contacting TLC, asking what they could do to help the city during this terrible time.

In response to the flood of inquiries, TLC launched “Operation Free Transportation” — an initiative that connected TLC drivers with stricken families, emergency workers, and blood donors to provide free rides as needed. Working closely with multiple city agencies and industry leaders, the city set up temporary taxi stands at various locations, and gave taxis, liveries, black cars, commuter vans, and paratransit vehicles special access to restricted parts of lower Manhattan near Ground Zero.

In all, more than 1,000 drivers volunteered their time, providing over 5,000 trips to those in need and taking an active part in New York City’s recovery. These contributions become especially poignant when you consider that many TLC drivers also experienced unfounded hate at the time due to their appearance, religion, or nation of origin—and still they volunteered.

After the operation wound down, TLC gave the participating drivers a certificate, designed a commemorative medallion, held a ceremony, and then Operation Free Transportation settled into the footnotes of history. But it’s a history we should all remember and recognize, and testimony to the character of so many of our drivers and the important connectivity they provide to our city, especially in the worst of times. To all the Operation Free Transportation drivers who are still with us, and those who’ve passed on, thank you.

In more recent news, we held a Public Hearing on August 13 about proposed rules intended to eliminate several unnecessary fees and fines drivers face, as well as enable Medallion Relief Program (MRP) members to transfer medallions to family members and still have them covered under MRP. The feedback we received at this hearing was invaluable. Many drivers shared personal, emotional experiences, which is why there is no substitute for public in-person hearings. Taking time out of the day to give public testimony is time that drivers aren’t doing trips and making money, and I am grateful to all who attended and made their voices heard.

I know there is more work to do, and rest assured we are just getting started.

Midori Valdivia
Commissioner and Chair
Taxi and Limousine Commission

Latest from AutoMarketwire

• Uber Cuts 10% of Employees in Sweeping Reorganization (The New York Times)

• Crunch for NYC Restroom Access Is a ‘Crisis’ for Taxi, Uber Drivers — Especially Women (The City Reporter)

• Waymo and Zoox expand into more U.S. markets as robotaxi race heats up (CNBC)

• Uber Drivers Say Waymo Is Taking Money Out of Their Pockets (Gadget Review)

• The end of the driver’s license: Uber exec calls car ownership ‘the most inefficient asset’ and says no one will need one in 15 to 20 years (Fortune)

• He Died in His NYC Taxi in a Heat Wave. Cabbies Are Returning His Body to Ivory Coast (The City Reporter)

• Katz: Staged crash law getting results (Queens Chronicle)

• Mayor Mamdani Cracks Down on Hidden Fees at Rental Car Companies (NYC.gov)

• Introducing Live Video on Teen Trips (Uber)

Latest from AutoMarketplace

• Dispatch from Dubai: Riding Baidu’s Apollo Go Robotaxi

• NYC Taxis and TLC-Plated FHVs Are Set to Gain Access to 13,000 Commercial Parking Spaces. Waymo Is Watching

• Taxi Trips Down 10.8%, Uber/Lyft Up 4.6%, 225 Medallions Back In Storage

Food for thought…

Subscribe now

AutoMarketplace is New York City’s leading intelligence platform for the taxi and for-hire vehicle (FHV) economy. Our newsletter and podcast track TLC insurance, taxi medallions, TLC plates, and trips across a market we size at $16 billion+, supported by our proprietary AIX, APX, and AYX indexes.

Disclosure: We are also an operator and investor in this market.

AutoMarketplace.com | YouTube | Advertise

Hi, this is Dawood, founder of AutoMarketplace.

On my way to speak at the annual conference of the Australian Taxi Industry Association (ATIA), hosted on the country’s Gold Coast last week (more on that in an upcoming post), I made a 36-hour pitstop in Dubai.

The timing was luck. On August 20th, Uber added Baidu’s driverless service Apollo Go to its platform there, the first market anywhere for the partnership. Uber’s other Chinese autonomous vehicle (AV) partner in the emirate, WeRide, has been charging fares for fully driverless rides since late March. Both operate along the same corridor, meaning that if you hail an Uber around Dubai’s well known Jumeirah and Umm Suqeim neighborhoods you could be matched with either one.

For someone based in New York, this was a rare opportunity to access a Chinese robotaxi service. We rode Waymo in Southern California earlier this year, so I had a recent benchmark to judge it against.

A day before the Apollo Go announcement, Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority (RTA), something like the MTA, DMV, DOT and TLC rolled into one, published its own robotaxi figures: 144 vehicles, 48 in active service, roughly 50 trips a day, and a 97% customer satisfaction rate.

For context, in 2025, the last full year before regional conflict cut into airport and tourism demand this year, Dubai’s licensed taxis and e-hail limousines (for-hire vehicles (FHVs)) served 161.1 million trips, about 441,000 a day. It is a substantial for-hire rides market, roughly half the trip volume of New York’s TLC-regulated marketplace, though an NYC trip generates, directionally, two to three times the fare.

While AV trips are small relative to the total market today, Dubai has set a target of 25% of all transport trips running autonomously by 2030, across every mode, and it is not starting from nothing. The Dubai Metro has been driverless since it opened in 2009 and carried over 294 million riders last year. The emirate’s AV program is the road vehicle piece of an ambition the rail network has been delivering on for the better part of two decades.

How Dubai Runs Its Taxi & FHV Market

Before I get into describing my experience riding around Dubai’s upscale, coastal Jumeirah and Umm Suqeim neighborhoods in a Chinese AV, it is important to understand the emirate’s approach to autonomous vehicles. It follows directly from how it already runs everything else that moves people.

Start with what RTA actually is. It runs the Dubai Metro, the tram, the public buses and the marine network. It builds and manages the roads. It registers every vehicle in the emirate and issues every driving licence. It licenses the taxi franchises and auctions their plates. It licenses the limousine companies that supply Uber, Careem, Bolt, and other popular apps like Yango, oversees shared mobility from car sharing to on-demand buses, sets every regulated fare, and grants the permits a robotaxi service provider needs.

An important takeaway, in our view, is that taxis, FHVs, and AVs are treated as part of a broader transportation ecosystem, much like buses and trains: a form of public transit over which the government effectively holds the franchise, expects an economic return, and actively manages and protects.

Article continues after advertisement

None of what follows is hidden, and none of it is accidental.

RTA is not a disinterested party, by design. It holds those interests directly, as majority joint venture partner in Hala, a taxi dispatch product it launched in 2019 with Careem, which Uber controls, and indirectly through the Dubai government’s 75% stake in the publicly listed Dubai Taxi Company (DTC).

For example, DTC added 600 taxi plates through a recent RTA auction and in July completed an AED 1.45 billion purchase, about $395 million, of rival franchise National Taxi, lifting it past 9,500 taxis and roughly 59% market share. Four taxi franchises remain, and the Dubai government, through its own investment fund, holds three quarters of the one that carries a majority of the fleet. There are presumably safeguards for private operators competing against a state-owned entity, but the setup is noteworthy.

As our readers know, New York City ran a version of the same idea for decades. The City capped taxis for a host of reasons, primarily to protect driver income, eventually auctioned medallions and booked the proceeds, selling 350 in fiscal 2014 for about $359 million against a plan that once assumed more than a billion. Then the apps arrived, and New York left the franchise it had been selling largely unprotected. For-hire vehicle (FHV) licenses stayed uncapped while Uber and Lyft scaled, and in July 2015 the City dropped a proposed growth cap altogether, settling for a traffic study instead. Medallion values fell from their 2014 peak, and the debt stayed with the drivers and fleets who had financed them. It took until 2018, amid a spate of driver suicides, for the Mayor, the City Council and the TLC to cap FHV licenses. That cap still holds, with wheelchair accessible vehicles the only practical exception.

Dubai has managed supply on both sides throughout. Taxi plates are finite and released through auctions, and every ride-hail vehicle must be registered with RTA as a limousine under a licensed operator. The standards are RTA’s rather than any platform’s, which is why Uber, Bolt and everyone else operating there publish nearly identical lists: an Emirates ID, an RTA card valid for Dubai only, an RTA vehicle license for an approved limousine, and a residency visa held as a limousine driver under an RTA-registered limousine company. The vehicle has standards of its own as well. It must pass RTA inspection before it carries a passenger. Age limits apply as well, commonly cited at around five years from when a car is manufactured. New York capped FHVs late and still leaves the driver side open. Dubai has managed both all along.

That history is why Dubai’s AV rollout is worth watching from New York. Whatever autonomous vehicles end up doing to Dubai’s taxi and for-hire market, they will do it at a pace RTA sets, on permits RTA issues, inside zones RTA draws, likely dispatched through a platform RTA part-owns, alongside a fleet the Dubai government owns a stake in. Apollo Go, WeRide, Pony.ai, and whoever follows them, whether Waymo, Tesla or someone else, will scale in Dubai on terms the regulator sets, or not at all.

New York is of course larger, more complex, and answerable to constituencies Dubai does not have to satisfy. But the authority is already here. The Mayor controls both DOT and the TLC, State rules sit on top of that, and the combination should hold against any attempt at federal preemption, which reaches vehicle safety standards rather than the licensing of a local commercial for-hire service in a jurisdiction like New York City.

What Dubai has, and New York has not yet used, is not greater regulatory power. It is coordination among the agencies that already have that power, combined with an early and unambiguous claim over who will license and control AVs. That matters because it prevents the existing taxi and FHV franchise from being forced to absorb another wave of disruption without the government first defining the rules.

AV market access is a licensing question before it is a technology question, and the city that settles how many, where, and on whose terms before the vehicles arrive is the city that decides the outcome. New York faced that question once with the apps and answered it late. It is arriving again.

Now back to Uber, Apollo Go, and what happened when I actually tried to hail a driverless ride in Dubai!

Uber Didn’t Work. Apollo Go Did.

Open the Uber app in Dubai today and you get a dedicated screen: “Autonomous on Uber.” Service hours 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM, a map of the designated service area with its approved pickup and dropoff points, and cards for both partners, Apollo Go and WeRide. Each card’s only button says “Learn more.”

I was inside the window and inside the zone, in Jumeirah and Umm Suqeim, two of the emirate’s more popular tourist districts, with pickup and dropoff set on the map. I even found an idle AV parked at the curb and opened the app a few hundred feet away, assuming it would read the vehicle sitting there. Ten minutes of reopening the app and moving the pin produced nothing. No autonomous option ever surfaced.

To be fair, Uber does not promise an AV. Its guidance is that riders in the zone “may be matched” with one, and that those who want one can select an “Autonomous” option to improve their chances. That said, I did not come all the way to Dubai to not ride in a Chinese AV.

So I downloaded Apollo Go. Signup took five minutes and I booked a driverless car without difficulty.

The Experience

The zone where Apollo Go and WeRide operate is essentially a grid of straight roads with fixed pickup points rather than door-to-door service. Parking at those points is limited, and the app gives you five minutes to reach the car once it arrives.

In daytime Dubai summer heat, which often clears 100 degrees Fahrenheit, walking to a designated point on a deadline is not a neutral inconvenience. You need to already be near one.

Before the trip the app makes you accept passenger guidelines. No pets. No dangerous or flammable items. Passengers under 16, over 70, pregnant, or with listed medical conditions must ride with “a healthy, sober adult who has full civil capacity.” Once aboard, stay out of the front seats and do not interfere with the autonomous system.

The vehicle was Apollo Go's sixth-generation RT6, a purpose-built electric robotaxi seating three across two rows. Which means that with two passengers in the back, the third ends up in the front passenger seat the guidelines just told you to avoid, which is slightly confusing.

Next to the Jaguar I-Pace Waymos I rode in Los Angeles it is a roomier van, with a hard frosted cover over the steering wheel where Waymo leaves the wheel exposed and turning. My roughly fifteen minute ride was comfortable, and the Apollo Go "driver" handled everything it was asked to. It was not asked much. The route was straight roads inside a small geofence, with none of the traffic, turns and distance the Waymos took on across Southern California. Whether that reflects the software's limits or the permit's, one ride inside a testing zone cannot tell you. The service area never gave the car the chance to show what it can and cannot do (probably for good reason is my guess).

Before anyone makes this a China versus America story, Waymo’s own newest robotaxi is built by Geely-owned Zeekr, and Waymo has imported more than 3,200 at tariffs reported over 125%. They are already carrying passengers in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

The trip itself went well and I trusted the vehicle once I was in it. But the fixed pickup points made the service feel more like a very good private van operation than a taxi or app trip. Early days, granted. Our benchmark is the Waymo trips we took across Los Angeles and Santa Monica, and Waymo came to any location an Uber or Lyft could.

How Much Did It Cost?

The economics are the part service providers, drivers, fleet owners and passengers should all note, though nobody should read too much into a single fare. This is 48 vehicles in service, inside a coastal geofence, with a promotion running. Prices at this stage are marketing, not economics.

The metered fare for my trip was AED 26.38, about $7.18, for roughly 3.1 miles in fifteen minutes. A promotion took exactly half, so I paid AED 13.19, about $3.59.

What is notable is that the fare is not a discount to the human alternative. Dubai prices e-hail above street hail by rule. RTA’s own service page states that “luxury transport/e-hail service charges are at least 30% higher than regular taxi fares.” A robotaxi dispatched through an app sits on the expensive side of that line, not the cheap one. Strip out the promotion and the cheapest ride is still a regular human-driven taxi, whether you flag one down or book it through an app.

That said, the promotion does drag the effective price below the human-driven alternatives, which is interesting. But it is running across a few dozen vehicles inside a geofence, and it tells you nothing about what RTA will let a robotaxi charge once the fleet is scaled. Discounting is easy at 50 trips a day, and may well be permitted to drive early adoption.

Something else worth flagging, because most coverage of robotaxi pricing gets it wrong. Publications usually quote AV trips on a per-mile basis only. Taximeters and app pricing do not work that way, and neither will AVs. Fares are calculated using both a per-mile rate and a per-minute rate. In slower, more congested cities, a greater share of the fare is driven by time rather than distance. New York’s TLC publishes both for driver minimum pay: $1.283 per mile and $0.681 per minute for non-WAV trips.

Apply that. My 3.1 miles took fifteen minutes, roughly 12 miles per hour (mph). Manhattan’s congestion relief zone averages 9.7 mph after congestion pricing, and the Midtown core was clocked at 4.6 mph in 2024. Call it 7.5 mph across the city, and the same 3.1 miles becomes a twenty-five minute trip, which sounds about right from my own experience. TLC’s own calculator puts the driver’s minimum pay at $21, of which about $4, or 19%, comes from the distance and about $17, or 81%, from the time. Quote that trip at a dollar figure per mile only and you have left out the four fifths of the fare that actually relates to time.

Apollo Go’s quote was $7.18 for the same distance (but less time), and after the promotion it collected $3.59. So New York runs nearly three times the normal Dubai Apollo Go fare, and probably more once you add the app’s take rate, sales tax and government surcharges. It is the fare gap noted at the top of this piece, showing up in a single ride. We would not assume that pricing travels to New York, but it is worth setting out how we think robotaxi pricing should be read.

What Dubai Licensed, and What New York Hasn’t

Dubai legislates AVs primarily through a licensing and permitting framework. Under Dubai Law No. 9 of 2023, RTA licenses each vehicle, separately permits the operator to conduct the activity, and determines the roads and areas on which AVs may operate. Foreign approval is not enough on its own: vehicles must pass an RTA technical inspection and meet RTA standards. In practice, local testing has also preceded fully driverless deployment. Primary civil liability sits with the operator, although the operator can seek recovery from the party ultimately responsible. Apollo Go received Dubai’s first fully driverless trial permit in January 2026. WeRide received its driverless trial permit in February.

Read my Apollo Go ride in Dubai back through that. The straight roads, the fixed pickup points, the twelve-hour service window: none of it is necessarily a limit of Baidu’s software. It is the shape of a permit. And on the evidence of the past decade, RTA will keep drawing that shape deliberately, balancing public safety against its own innovation targets, and against the transition of a taxi and limousine sector in which the government has a substantial stake.

Which raises the question worth tracking as the fleet grows. Does RTA issue AV licenses as a new category, or does it convert the taxi licenses it has already owns and auctioned into AV licenses? That is speculation on our part, but it is not far-fetched in a market where the government holds three quarters of the largest operator and controls how many plates and licenses exist. The answer matters more than the technology does. A permit is a permission that can be withdrawn, with nothing to sell. A license modeled on a vehicle license is an asset that can be owned, financed and transferred. One path lets the incumbent industry come along. The other retires it.

There is a broader frame here that travels. Dubai treats AVs as one more mode inside a public transit ecosystem, not as a separate industry, and that is the lens New York will need. The city, state and federal governments have spent decades and tens of billions building and maintaining the subway and bus network, and New York has just spent enormous political capital on congestion pricing to push riders toward it. A robotaxi fleet that pulls people off the subway is not only competing with taxis. It is competing with the thing the public has been paying for. Which brings us back to where the medallion began: a franchise right the city created and sold. Perhaps that is where this ends up again.

On the ride itself, I came away still more impressed by Waymo, but Apollo Go was impressive too. The vehicle handled the trip smoothly and confidently, and the tightly drawn coastal geofence never gave it much opportunity to show the outer limits of what the technology can do. What is not in doubt is that Dubai intends to be an AV city, and that its regulator will decide the pace. As New York works through its own robotaxi legislation, Dubai is worth watching closely, because the same question is coming here.

Latest from AutoMarketwire

• Waymo and Zoox expand into more U.S. markets as robotaxi race heats up (CNBC)

• Uber Drivers Say Waymo Is Taking Money Out of Their Pockets (Gadget Review)

• He Died in His NYC Taxi in a Heat Wave. Cabbies Are Returning His Body to Ivory Coast (The City Reporter)

• Katz: Staged crash law getting results (Queens Chronicle)

• Mayor Mamdani Cracks Down on Hidden Fees at Rental Car Companies (NYC.gov)

• They were Lyft drivers. Now they’re cleaning Waymos (Business Insider)

• City Council Transportation chair asks Apple to boot Empower ride-share service from app store (amNewYork)

Latest from AutoMarketplace

• NYC Taxis and TLC-Plated FHVs Are Set to Gain Access to 13,000 Commercial Parking Spaces. Waymo Is Watching

• Taxi Trips Down 10.8%, Uber/Lyft Up 4.6%, 225 Medallions Back In Storage

• EXCLUSIVE: What Happened to Revel’s TLC Plates?

Food for thought…

Subscribe now

AutoMarketplace is New York City’s leading intelligence platform for the taxi and for-hire vehicle (FHV) economy. Our newsletter and podcast track TLC insurance, taxi medallions, TLC plates, and trips across a market we size at $16 billion+, supported by our proprietary AIX, APX, and AYX indexes.

Disclosure: We are also an operator and investor in this market.

AutoMarketplace.com | YouTube | Advertise

New York City’s Department of Transportation (DOT) will hold an online public hearing at 10am on Tuesday, September 1, 2026 on the rule implementing Local Law 24 of 2026.

The law opens roughly 13,000 commercial metered parking spaces to TLC-plated for-hire vehicles (FHVs) through a pilot program. DOT is also extending the same right to yellow cabs, using its own authority to regulate parking.

For drivers, the immediate significance is practical: a legal place to stop, pay, and take a break, especially to use a restroom. But the same curb access could eventually matter to autonomous vehicle (AV) fleets, which is where Waymo enters the story.

The terms matter as much as the access. DOT’s proposed rule sets the maximum at a total of three hours on a single block, unless a posted sign indicates otherwise, and normal metered parking rules still apply, meaning drivers pay. That is a meaningful upgrade on what was debated in September 2025, when Intro 1000, the City Council proposal which led to Local Law 24, contemplated 30 minutes, four times daily.

According to the DOT’s public hearing document, within Manhattan’s Central Business District (CBD) south of 60th Street, there are only 55 dedicated taxi relief stands. Of the parking spaces at these stands, just 137 are open to both taxis and FHVs, while 151 are reserved exclusively for yellow cabs.

Together, Local Law 24 and DOT’s proposed extension to yellow cabs represent a major expansion of legal parking access for the city’s more than 104,000 FHVs, 10,500 active yellow cabs, and the drivers who operate them. The pilot will run for one year and may be extended for an additional 180 days if DOT determines that doing so serves the public interest. DOT must then report on the program’s effects, providing the evidence that will help determine whether the policy should become permanent.

NYC Taxi and For-Hire Vehicle Relief Stands (NYC DOT)

NYC Metered Parking Map (NYC DOT)

How We Got Here

Local Law 24 began as Intro 1000, sponsored by former City Council Member Justin Brannan. The City Council’s Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure heard the bill on September 15, 2025, and the full Council passed an amended version on December 18th. The law took effect January 17, 2026, directing DOT to launch the pilot within 180 days.

We covered the September 2025 City Council hearing in full (click here for Part 1 and here for Part 2). At the time, DOT opposed Intro 1000 as written, warning that opening commercial meter spaces to FHVs could displace delivery vehicles, increase double-parking and require costly changes to existing payment systems. DOT instead favored expanding designated relief stands.

The Trucking Association of New York raised similar concerns about competition for already-constrained loading zones, while TLC acknowledged the need for more driver relief but deferred to DOT, which controls parking meters, signage and curb management.

Driver organizations including the Independent Drivers Guild (IDG), New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers (NYSFTD) and New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA) broadly supported the proposal, with testimony repeatedly framing the shortage of legal places to stop as a health and dignity issue. NYTWA Executive Director Bhairavi Desai supported expanding access but asked that the spaces be reserved for TLC drivers operating TLC-licensed vehicles, warning that the bill could become a “Trojan horse” for AV companies seeking curb space in the future, a point we will return to shortly.

IDG Policy Director Andrew Greenblatt supplied the number that defined the debate: roughly 80,000 FHV drivers and just 31 relief stands, or about one stand for every 2,500 drivers.

“This isn’t just a matter of convenience, it’s a matter of health, safety, and basic dignity…the first time we met with [NYC DOT] on this issue was 2019. They told us they would work on it. It is six years later and they’ve added exactly zero relief stands in six years. At this rate, over the next hundred years, they’ll add zero relief stands.”
— Andrew Greenblatt, Policy Director, Independent Drivers Guild

The Record Before DOT

Ahead of DOT’s September 1st public rule hearing, The Black Car Fund (BCF), which covers more than 100,000 drivers across over 550 member bases statewide, submitted public testimony supporting the proposed amendment and launch of the pilot program.

“The current number of relief spaces available to for-hire vehicle drivers does not come close to meeting the needs of this large and critical workforce…Expanding lawful access to approximately 13,000 commercial metered spaces would make relief options available on a much broader scale and in more of the locations where for-hire vehicle drivers actually work.”
— Ira Goldstein, Executive Director, The Black Car Fund

Importantly, the proposal does not guarantee drivers a space or exempt them from paying the meter or complying with posted time restrictions. BCF characterized that as a reasonable balance between drivers’ needs and the competing demands for curb space.

As of publication, only five written public comments had been submitted. Not all are supportive: one anonymous commenter argued that commercial parking must remain available for delivery vehicles and pointed to existing FHV stands as an alternative. With such a small record so far, each filing carries unusual weight in the rulemaking process. Individuals can submit their own comments here.

“This is a terrible idea and a perfect example of the outright regulatory capture by Uber and Lyft... Commercial vehicles need places to make deliveries. There are already FHV layover stands.”
— Anonymous, public comment published August 3, 2026

Article continues after advertisement

Why This Matters for NYC TLC Plates, Taxi Medallions and AVs

For drivers and fleet operators, the immediate economics are straightforward: lawful curb access can reduce exposure to parking tickets, cut the time spent circling for a legal place to stop for a bathroom break, and create more usable time between trips. Even before AVs enter the calculation, those operating advantages could make the regulatory assets carrying the privilege incrementally more valuable.

Although the rule sunsets, we expect this access to be made permanent and, over time, to increase the value of taxi medallions and TLC plates. Curb access is a scarce operating privilege in a city steadily reallocating street space away from vehicles. When that privilege attaches to a licensed vehicle or regulatory asset rather than solely to an individual driver, some of its economic value can capitalize into the license.

This also brings us back to Desai’s warning at the September 2025 hearing:

“We don’t want to see this bill become a Trojan horse, where in the future, AV companies, it may be Waymo today, Uber itself has said they expect their prototype in another four to five years to come in and use these spaces as a means to basically do mechanic on their vehicle. These spaces should be for all TLC drivers that are operating TLC licensed vehicles.”

— Bhairavi Desai, Executive Director, New York Taxi Workers Alliance, September 15, 2025

She is right about the mechanism, and DOT’s proposed rule does not adopt her fix. The rule is drafted around the vehicle, making it lawful to stand “a for-hire vehicle or a taxi,” with no requirement that a licensed driver be present.

Her concern is no longer hypothetical. On August 13, 2026, Waymo’s policy development and research manager, Arielle Fleisher, published a piece in Streetsblog USA making the case for precisely this use of the curb. Citing research Waymo itself commissioned from UC Berkeley and UC Irvine, she argued that letting AVs stage at the curb cuts empty miles by more than 60%, and that the curb is constrained by policy rather than physics. The piece ran nineteen days before DOT’s hearing.

Note what Waymo is asking for: purpose-built permitting standards, not taxi medallions or TLC plates. We think the existing TLC licensing regime wins, and we set out why in our AV licensing framework. A new AV permitting regime requires fresh rulemaking, City Council and mayoral appetite, and a fight with organized labor. In New York, that means well over 100,000 drivers, many of them full-time, and their families. The TLC regime already carries curb rights, airport access and street-hail privileges, the last of which sits with medallions alone. Nothing needs to be built. The licenses already exist, and they can be bought.

Desai sees an opening for AV companies to take space built for drivers. We see the same opening, and note that if those rights stay attached to taxi medallions and TLC plates, whoever wants to operate autonomously in New York has to acquire the licenses that carry them. That is upside for the incumbent holders, including the driver-owners and local fleets who own them today.

Readers should weigh that against our position as an operator and investor in this market, including our shareholding in Marblegate’s publicly listed medallion entity, set out in full here.

Latest from AutoMarketwire

• Congestion pricing hasn’t changed much about NYC’s air quality, city report finds (Gothamist)

• NY judge tosses Uber lawsuit claiming lawyers inflated injury claims (Reuters)

• Waymo is eating into the ride-hailing market in some cities. The fallout for human drivers stays fuzzy (Business Insider)

• Phila.-Based Lawyer for Uber Says Colleagues Face Hate Mail, Violent Graphics: ‘My Colleagues Are Getting Death Threats’ (Law.com)

• An Uber driver got a $32 tip on a $65 airport run. Then his passenger offered $1,500 for a much bigger job (Upworthy)

• ‘These Fines Hurt Us’: Drivers Pack NYC Taxi Commission Meeting on Cutting Penalties (The City Reporter)

• Travis Kalanick: How AI Will Transform the Physical World (a16z)

• Waymo Speaks: We Have More In Common With Urbanists Than You Might Think (Streetsblog USA)

• How To Make Driverless Ride-Hail Work in New York (Vital City)

Latest from AutoMarketplace

• Taxi Trips Down 10.8%, Uber/Lyft Up 4.6%, 225 Medallions Back In Storage

• EXCLUSIVE: What Happened to Revel’s TLC Plates?

• “Drivers Are Not Simply License Numbers”: Recap of First Mamdani-Era NYC TLC Meeting

Food for thought…

Subscribe now

AutoMarketplace is New York City’s leading intelligence platform for the taxi and for-hire vehicle (FHV) economy. Our newsletter and podcast track TLC insurance, taxi medallions, TLC plates, and trips across a market we size at $16 billion+, supported by our proprietary AIX, APX, and AYX indexes.

Disclosure: We are also an operator and investor in this market.

AutoMarketplace.com | YouTube | Advertise

In our last monthly TLC Factbook update, we got the driver’s take, speaking with yellow cab drivers across the city about how business felt on the ground. After a robust 2025, yellow cab trips had declined year-over-year for four consecutive months: -6.8%, -7.1%, -7.0%, and -13.2% through May, so we wanted to get closer to what was clearly a concerning trend.

With newly released June data showing yellow cab trips down again, 10.8% year-over-year, and 225 taxi medallions going back into storage, we wanted the industry’s take. We talked to the people brokering taxi medallion transactions and running taxi garages and fleets, the business side of the market, to hear what they think is driving the decline.

The city’s yellow cab trade struck an admirably defiant tone throughout our conversations, but six themes came up consistently:

1. Uber and Lyft NYC driver waitlists are not as stringent. As the apps onboard more NYC TLC-licensed drivers, fewer are looking to yellow cab as an alternative.

2. Empower, the controversial app accused of evading MTA surcharges and taxes, is taking away significant trip volume.

3. The WAV exemption to the TLC Plate Cap is adding more for-hire vehicles to an already oversaturated market. It's also created a perverse incentive: buying a wheelchair accessible vehicle (WAV) to get a "free" plate is more attractive than buying a WAV to attach to a $100,000+ taxi medallion.

4. Off-meter fares are a bigger problem than commonly acknowledged. Drivers are collecting payment directly from passengers, often via a Square Reader (“dongle”), so those trips, along with the taxes and surcharges owed on them, never show up in the data.

5. Street hail culture has less pull with Gen Z and tourists, who default to ridehailing apps over waving down a cab, even when the taxi will, more often than not, have been cheaper.

6. Medallions are going back into storage as smaller fleet owners weigh the cost of occupancy against the cost of insurance. Some are choosing not to insure underused cars; others are hesitant to invest in a vehicle replacement until business improves.

Each of these explanations holds up, to an extent. Empower, reportedly running 1 million trips a month in NYC, equivalent to roughly 25% of monthly taxi trip volume, is a problem that needs urgent regulatory action. The WAV exemption’s “free plate,” which makes a $100,000+ medallion purchase, or an investment in the city’s yellow cab franchise, look unattractive by comparison, is a real issue.

We also gave several industry players some frank advice. Fleets and garages need to spend more on advertising and marketing. Many, not all, need to do a better job attracting drivers, whether through promotional lease rates or zero-down medallion financing. And perhaps most importantly, the industry needs to get in front of New Yorkers with the simple fact that a cab ride is often 20% to 30% cheaper than an Uber or Lyft.

Give an icon a stage: put the yellow cab on a billboard with a message as simple as JFK → Manhattan. $891. No surge, no surprises. You can have the best, cheapest product in the world, but if no one knows about it, it doesn’t exist.

Most of the industry’s complaints are legitimate and should be addressed. Some of our advice is tough love for a market we’re invested in and want to see succeed.

We share the rest of our monthly Factbook update, with additional details, below.

Article continues after advertisement

NYC Taxi & FHV Trip and Utilization Rate Trends

First, it should be mentioned the TLC publishes data for “FHV - Other,” which represents traditional black car, livery, and luxury base dispatches (think Carmel or Dial 7), with a one-month delay, and usually revises the prior month’s previously disclosed figures. FHV - Other typically represents between 6% and 9% of total industry trips.

With that noted, here are the latest industrywide trends.

All trips. Based on the latest TLC Factbook, in May 2026 (the most recent month with complete industrywide data), all for-hire trips declined 1.8% year-on-year (YoY) to 894,927 average daily trips, which is a reversal of a modest but positive growth trend that had ranged between 1.7% and 4.1%. Of note, Empower's growing trip count, reported to be close to 33,000 daily dispatches, is not captured by TLC data because the app does not use a TLC-licensed dispatching base.

Uber and Lyft, or “high-volume” (HV) services. In June 2026, HV trips increased 4.6% YoY (4.7% year-to-date YoY) to 692,529 average daily trips. Based on disclosed TLC market shares and AutoMarketplace analysis (plus estimates), Uber's TLC-plated FHV trip growth was 7.6%, while Lyft declined 3.1%. Lyft's market share relative to Uber declined significantly vs. May, from 30.6% to 26.6% relative share. Of note, app e-hails sent to yellow cabs are not included in Uber or Lyft trip counts.

Uber and Lyft utilization rates (UR). Utilization rate (UR) is how busy (utilized) Uber and Lyft keep NYC drivers logged into their platforms. Put simply, if a TLC driver is logged into Uber for 10 hours in a day and spends five of those hours with a passenger, the UR is 50%. In May 2026, Uber’s UR was 54.2%, down from 57.5% a year earlier, while Lyft’s UR increased to 57.1% versus 56.3%. Year-to-date industrywide UR is 54.3%. The Uber numbers are worth watching: Uber trips are growing, but its drivers are spending less of their logged-in time on trips, a sign that driver (vehicle) supply on the platform is growing faster than trip demand.

Other FHV bases. The TLC revises non-HV base data often. The latest Factbook shows sector trips up 3.5% in April and down 36.5% in May. Given these figure are revised often, we will wait for next month’s TLC update to comment on what on its face would be an abnormally large trip decline.

Green cabs. The green cab, or street hail livery (SHL), sector continues to experience historic distress. In June 2026, trips declined 20.7% YoY. There are currently only 511 working green cabs.

Green Rides Milestone

In June 2026, the industry hit a Green Rides Initiative (GRI) milestone: 24.3% of all Uber and Lyft dispatches in the five boroughs were serviced by either an electric vehicle (EV) or WAV. With compliance measured on a calendar-year basis, the sector appears on pace to meet 2026’s 25% requirement.

The open question is what happens next. The benchmark jumps to 40% in 2027, and there are lingering questions about whether that step-up will be delayed or revised. If Green Rides is in fact contributing to the yellow cab sector’s trip declines, as we’ve argued it may be, that pressure is only set to intensify.

Latest from AutoMarketwire

• The Union Deal That’s Undermining Gig Workers (Jacobin)

• Curb Enthusiasm | Ep 18: Congestion Pricing, Autonomous Vehicles, & Parking Reform w/ Sam Schwartz (NYC DOT)

• Could black cabs realistically survive now without third-party taxi apps? (TaxiPoint UK)

• If You Get in a Car Crash, the Risk Is Growing Your Insurance Won’t Pay (WSJ)

• Is Mamdani’s pledge to make the buses free fueling fare evasion? (WNYC)

• The typical gig worker is changing – and struggling more than ever to make ends meet (The Conversation U.S.)

• Flock Pitched a Plan To Turn Uber and Lyft Drivers Into Roaming Surveillance Vehicles (404 Media)

• Uber & Lyft’s “Million-Dollar” Insurance Safety Net Is Quietly Disappearing (The Mountaineer)

Latest from AutoMarketplace

• EXCLUSIVE: What Happened to Revel’s TLC Plates?

• “Drivers Are Not Simply License Numbers”: Recap of First Mamdani-Era NYC TLC Meeting

• No Interest Without Conflict

Food for thought…

Subscribe now

AutoMarketplace is New York City’s leading intelligence platform for the taxi and for-hire vehicle (FHV) economy, a newsletter and podcast tracking TLC insurance, taxi medallions, TLC plates, and trips across a $16 billion+ market. Proprietary indexes: AIX, APX, AYX.

AutoMarketplace.com | YouTube | Advertise

When Revel rolled out its baby-blue fleet of all-electric Tesla Model Ys back in 2021, we predicted its W2 employee ridehailing business would be short-lived: a bridge to fully utilize its Brooklyn charging hub while the company built what it actually wanted, a citywide EV charging network. Four years and a lot of investor cash later, that is exactly how it played out.

Last August, we broke the news that Revel was exiting NYC rideshare and quietly shopping its corporate-held TLC plates, accumulated in a narrow window between 2021 and 2023: roughly 50 secured just before the TLC removed the EV exemption in June 2021, and 60+ more in an unusual March 2023 release of EV-only plates. Add the 50+ plates its rental partner Hertz picked up in that same release, and you arrive at the ~165 licenses that hit the market.

Revel is actively seeking buyers for 165 for-hire vehicle (FHV) licenses, better known as TLC plates, with asking prices reportedly between $20,000–$25,000 per plate for those held by its corporate entities. Industry chatter points to major TLC rental companies, including American Lease, Tower, and Voyager Global’s Buggy and Fast Track, as the most likely buyers.
— AutoMarketplace (August 13, 2025)

Clean, scaled corporate plate portfolios almost never hit the open market, so speculation swirled that an autonomous vehicle (AV) player like Waymo or Tesla might grab Revel’s licenses as a rare entry point into the five boroughs ahead of robotaxis being cleared to operate in NYC. AVs are delayed for now, but that conversation will be back soon enough.

Then this May came the announcement that all but closed the book: Revel and fellow EV-charging infrastructure company Voltera are combining into a single company under the Voltera name.

Upon closing of the transaction, the combined company will operate under the Voltera name and brand with a streamlined organizational structure led by Revel CEO Frank Reig.
— Voltera Power press release (May 26, 2026)

And with that, the Revel brand, a name almost every TLC driver and fleet owner knew, effectively disappears. Which leaves one loose end: what actually happened to Revel’s TLC plates?

Article continues after advertisement

So What Happened to the Plates?

AutoMarketplace can exclusively confirm: Revel’s TLC plates were never officially sold. They are, however, effectively controlled by American Lease, the largest TLC rental company in the city and Revel’s existing fleet partner, a relationship we also broke first.

No headline transaction, but a handoff in everything but name. American Lease manages the plates today, and our understanding, from people close to the matter, is that it holds an option to acquire them outright (via the FHV Corporations that have claim to Revel’s plates), an option it has not yet officially exercised.

The structure flows naturally from the fleet relationship we uncovered: why buy on day one what you already operate, when the option locks up the asset either way?

As noted above, the ~165 plates we reported hitting the market last August covered both the Revel and Hertz portfolios, and because a plate can take several weeks to come online after issuance, exact counts were always estimates. NYC Open Data from August 2024 puts it precisely: 109 active plates across five Revel corporate entities, plus 54 across Hertz’s FHV LLCs. That’s 163.

Two years later, the split in outcomes could not be starker.

Every one of Revel’s 109 plates is still active today, plus three more now on the registry, for 112 in total (the extra three are likely plates that were temporarily inactive in August 2024, due to renewal timing, storage, or a violation that briefly sidelined a vehicle license, rather than new additions).

The data also quietly confirms the handoff, twice over. In August 2024, all of Revel’s plates were affiliated with its own base, Electric Peppers LLC; today, all 112 dispatch through Uber’s base, and exactly one vehicle, an individually held plate, remains affiliated with Electric Peppers. And the vehicles themselves tell the same story. Two years ago, Revel’s plates sat on the company’s signature Teslas and a handful of Kias. Today, every single one of the 112 VINs belongs to a Fisker Ocean, the very EVs American Lease acquired in its historic bet on the bankrupt automaker’s fleet. The plates didn’t just land in American Lease’s portfolio on paper. They’re bolted to its cars.

The Hertz plates? All 54 have fallen off the active registry. And this is no clerical shuffle. While a plate’s corporate entity name can change, its FHV license number is permanent, and not one of Hertz’s 54 FHV license numbers, DMV plate numbers, or even vehicle VINs from the August 2024 registry appears anywhere in the August 2026 data, under any name. The licenses are gone, the plates are gone, and so are the cars.

Nor could Hertz simply sit on them: TLC rules allow a plate to be stored for a maximum of 90 consecutive days, once every two-year renewal period, after which comes a fine, suspension, and ultimately revocation for non-use. Use it, sell it, or lose it. Whether it was parent-company complications around selling or a desire to stay out of it, the result is the same: licenses forfeited rather than transferred.

Lyft made a similar decision (mistake) with its fleet subsidiary Flexdrive during the pandemic. Per our 2020 reporting, Flexdrive was the second largest TLC fleet in the city, holding over 3,000 FHV licenses. When Lyft exited its NYC fleet business, those licenses were surrendered in what remains the largest voluntary TLC plate forfeiture on record.

So why does a plate autopsy matter? Because of what TLC plates are, and what they might become. A TLC plate is the for-hire vehicle (FHV) license required to conduct paid trips in the five boroughs. To be clear, plates are not a “hard” transferable asset like taxi medallions. Technically, no one owns a TLC plate at all: holders have a claim to the access rights granted by a city permit, and roughly 70% of plates are individually claimed and cannot be sold.

The license cap is reviewed annually by the TLC rather than permanently fixed by law, and plates lack the medallion’s exclusive benefits (street hails, airport curbside queues, no sales tax on trips, lower MTA and congestion surcharges). In our view, a plate’s value today is closer to the old radio or base dispatch rights that traded hands among drivers at busy pre-Uber “black car” bases like Carmel and Dial 7, where a single radio could fetch $25,000. A pseudo-asset built on regulatory scarcity, not a deeded one. But the same scarcity is real: the TLC’s 2026 FHV License Review kept the cap firmly in place, and only WAV-restricted plates remain freely available.

Hard asset or not, plates sit on the one thing every future operator needs: legal access to NYC’s paid for-hire trip market. Under current rules, a driverless robotaxi conducting paid trips would need a TLC license. We believe the existing licensing regime will be grandfathered into any new AV framework, with priority given to taxi medallions. That is why we’ve argued that medallions and TLC plates should be treated as capital assets in the AV transition, with license holders accruing a regulated per-trip commission, in effect a royalty or operating right on the autonomous networks that will one day replace the driver.

And remember, AVs are not just coming for today’s roughly 900,000 daily for-hire trips. They are coming for all miles: mass transit, private car trips, and the commuter corridors around the city. In that world, plates may carry a lesser AV claim than medallions, but they serve two purposes no new framework can ignore: a ready-made mechanism to manage congestion by capping how many vehicles, human or driverless, chase trips on NYC streets, and a way to ensure the AV transition benefits local drivers and operators. Those royalty rights would be far more widely held than medallions ever were. Individual driver-owners claim an estimated 76,000 TLC plates, while only a few thousand of the city’s 13,587 medallions remain individually owned, the rest sitting with lenders and fleets. Even the corporate side of the plate market is overwhelmingly local: fleet businesses like American Lease built and operate here, in a market where AV operators like Waymo and Tesla currently hold no license claims at all. When AV commissions flow, they would flow to working drivers and local NYC businesses.

Seen through that lens, the Revel and Hertz split isn’t bookkeeping trivia. American Lease kept 112 potential claims on the AV era alive and on the road. Hertz let 54 of them expire. The baby blue EVs are gone. Revel’s plates never left the road.

Disclaimer: Entities that share common ownership with AutoMarketplace operate and manage an NYC TLC fleet, hold claims to TLC plates, and own shares of Marblegate Capital Corp. (MGTE), the largest corporate lender to, and holder of, NYC taxi medallions. We also earn advertising and consulting income from industry stakeholders. In short, we have a financial interest in the TLC plate and medallion markets and the frameworks we write about. As we’ve said before, there is no interest without conflict. To find out more about how we approach conflicts and disclosures, click here.

Latest from AutoMarketwire

• Ranking of worldwide taxi costs 2026: In which cities is the taxi the most expensive? (Taxi Heute)

• Uber Aims to Build the World’s Largest Autonomous Vehicle Platform. Can It Compete With Tesla? (The Motley Fool)

• Uber CEO brushes off reports of a Waymo break-up (The Verge)

• NYC law on sharing food delivery apps’ data unconstitutional, US appeals court rules (Reuters)

• Uber’s Strategy for Fighting Sexual Assault Suits: ‘What Were You Wearing?’ (The New York Times)

Latest from AutoMarketplace

• “Drivers Are Not Simply License Numbers”: Recap of First Mamdani-Era NYC TLC Meeting

• No Interest Without Conflict

• Dampower: The App That Beats Uber & Lyft on Price (Don’t Ask About the Taxes)

Subscribe now

AutoMarketplace is the largest newsletter and podcast covering NYC’s $16 billion for-hire transportation market — tracking commercial insurance, TLC plates, taxi medallions, and trips. Proprietary indexes: AIX, APX, AYX.

AutoMarketplace.com | YouTube | Advertise

Note: IT problems disrupted the meeting, leaving both the livestream and its recording hard to follow for much of their length. The NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission (NYC TLC) subsequently published an official transcript of the proceedings, attached below; this recap is based on that transcript.

"Drivers are not simply license numbers. They are the parent working to pay for [a] child's education, the neighbor cheering for their home country's success in the World Cup, and the small business owner working to build a better future."
— NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission Chair Midori Valdivia

The New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission (“TLC”), the regulator of the city’s roughly $16 billion for-hire transportation market, held its first official meeting under Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration on July 15th, convened by newly appointed and confirmed Chair Midori Valdivia.

Calling the meeting to order at 10:06 am before Board Commissioners Paul Bader, Kenneth C. Mitchell, Andrea Bierstein and Elisa Velazquez, Valdivia, a returning TLC official who previously served as the agency’s Deputy Commissioner for Finance and Administration, framed her tenure around three priorities:

1. Driver and passenger dignity

2. Corporate accountability

3. A transportation system that “works together.”

She grounded that agenda in the people behind the numbers, telling the board and the public she had met more than 200 drivers, base owners, agents and taxi medallion owners in her first months on the job. The stakes, she noted, are citywide: the TLC regulates 180,000 drivers completing nearly a million trips a day, which she called about 25% of the subway system.

Cutting Driver Fines, Easing Medallion Transfers

The chair immediately rolled out proposed relief for TLC-licensed drivers. The proposed rules, published July 13th, come out of the TLC’s first penalty review in roughly a decade and respond to Executive Order 11, a January 2026 mayoral directive requiring every city agency to review and reduce fees and penalties that burden small businesses.

They eliminate a $200 fine for taking a required annual drug test more than 30 days late and $100 to $500 fines for missed vehicle inspections, in both cases where the license is already suspended until the driver complies. They also scrap two license fees: a $25 charge to replace a lost or damaged license and a $50 fine for reporting a lost, stolen, unreadable, or outdated license. Valdivia said the package sends nearly a million dollars back to the industry. It heads to a public hearing at 10:00 am on August 13th at 33 Beaver Street, with written comment open through that date.

Valdivia also flagged proposed medallion-relief flexibility: letting a deceased owner’s estate transfer a medallion to immediate family, letting living owners do the same, and letting partners exit a medallion-owning partnership by mutual agreement. She touted $12.9 million secured for the medallion-relief reserve fund in fiscal 2027, with a pledge to restructure loans for the remaining 200 or so eligible owners. On procedure, she noted four e-hail rulemaking petitions filed by Michael Simon in January had been denied in March, and the board unanimously adopted its December 3, 2025 minutes.

Driver Survey

Chair Valdivia presented her findings from the TLC’s first comprehensive driver survey, which drew 3,930 responses, over a third in languages other than English. Most drivers said their TLC relationship had improved or held steady, even as opinion split on fairness and fines and competition with illegal operators ranked as their top frustration. As our full breakdown of the 3,930 responses detailed, the clearest through-line is that driver earnings aren’t keeping up with the cost of driving. Launched at JFK with QR-coded palm cards, the survey is one the TLC plans to run twice a year.

Board questions drew out market tensions. On corporate grievances, Valdivia pointed to open-comment concerns over the share of fares taken by app companies, rising commercial insurance, and leasing terms, cautioning these were snapshots, not ranked findings. Commissioner Bader pressed on driver “lockouts” and the City Council’s deactivation bill, now in court; General Counsel Sherryl Eluto said a preliminary-injunction request from Uber and Lyft (plus a separate passenger suit) was due the next day. While the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) is the lead agency drafting the rules for an August hearing, Valdivia emphasized the TLC works alongside it as “deep partners.” She stressed the agency is not a bystander, saying it strongly supports the bill and still hears from drivers locked out since 2019 and 2022.

Article continues after advertisement

That fight tipped decisively toward the companies just days later. On July 21st, the week after the meeting, Judge Gregory H. Woods granted Uber and Lyft’s preliminary injunction, blocking Local Law 52 a week before its July 28th effective date. Finding the companies likely to win on Contracts Clause grounds because the law benefits only a “narrow class” of drivers, Woods blocked the entire law, also freezing DCWP’s planned $73 million, 170-person compliance division built around it.

JFK & Flatbush Ave Enforcement

Ira Goldapper, Deputy Commissioner of the TLC’s Uniformed Services Bureau — the agency’s uniformed enforcement arm, known as the TLC Police — delivered an upbeat report built around a shift from patrol-based to “operations-based” targeting of unlicensed for-hire activity.

The bureau’s training academy is now state-certified to run peace-officer training in-house, with a new class graduating July 28th. Through June, officers issued more than 3,500 summonses to unlicensed operators (versus 4,369 for all of last year), more than doubled illegal commuter-van summonses, and seized 73 vehicles. Along the Flatbush Avenue corridor, 15 joint operations with the NYC Sheriff’s Office, using license-plate readers to impound parked cars, yielded 473 summonses and 171 impoundments across Flatbush and Jamaica Avenue.

At JFK, a “deterrence through presence” surge since mid-June stations up to 30 uniformed TLC officers around Terminal 4 nearly around the clock, with Port Authority police covering the other terminals; hustling, congestion, and Port Authority service calls are all down sharply.

Goldapper cautioned that staffing is stretched, at about 122 enforcement officers (rising to roughly 142 with the incoming class) against a pre-COVID peak near 250, and asked the TLC Board to lobby for more officers and budget to reach sites like the Staten Island Ferry and the Brooklyn and Manhattan cruise terminals. Board Commissioner Velazquez and Chair Valdivia pushed him to measure the economic impact on drivers’ pockets, not just summons counts.

Base Approvals

Parmjit Singh, the TLC’s Assistant Commissioner for Licensing and Standards, presented two new livery bases and 44 renewals, 46 in all, approved unanimously.

Board Discussion & Conclusion

"I've seen New York's treasures celebrated and renowned and also those not made of stone or steel. The stories of my town, like the song of the exile. The men who drive the cabs as they live the story of our city and the promise of our flag."
— "Song of the Exiled," read into the record by Board Commissioner Paul Bader

In other business, Bader read the chorus of “Song of the Exiled,” a singer-songwriter’s homage to the city’s cab drivers that he floated as an unofficial TLC anthem. He then read aloud a draft resolution on bathroom access. Citing 180,000 TLC drivers plus thousands of Amazon, UPS and FedEx delivery drivers without a home base, it would ask city agencies to make those companies help fund a proposed network of 1,000 portable toilets.

No vote was taken, but Board Commissioner Bierstein backed the idea of using public resolutions to add a media-facing front to the agency’s behind-the-scenes work, arguing “publicity can be our friend” and that “a resolution from the Commission is news.” Chair Valdivia welcomed the idea, calling bathroom access “top of my agenda” and noting the TLC is already working the issue with the Mayor’s office.

After marking Disability Pride Month and highlighting the TLC’s work toward a more wheelchair-accessible fleet, Chair Valdivia gaveled the meeting to a close at 11:00 am.

Latest from AutoMarketwire

• Uber and Waymo Are Fighting Over Who Gets to Replace DC’s Drivers (Startup Fortune)

• Uber’s Strategy for Fighting Sexual Assault Suits: ‘What Were You Wearing?’ (The New York Times)

• Uber’s Robotaxi Ambition to Face Scrutiny as Shares Languish (Bloomberg)

• Dozens of city officials are driven around by chauffeurs. Are they living in a bubble? (City & State)

• Former Voice of America journalist says Uber Fleet account hack cost him thousands in lost business (WUSA9)

• NYC Taxi Commission Lands 21-Year Downtown Headquarters Lease (Hoodline)

Latest from AutoMarketplace

• No Interest Without Conflict

• Dampower: The App That Beats Uber & Lyft on Price (Don’t Ask About the Taxes)

• Federal Judge Blocks NYC Driver Deactivation Law. DCWP’s $73 Million Expansion On Hold

• David Do on Uber Lockouts, Driver Pay, TLC Plates, Taxi Medallions & AVs

Food for thought…

Subscribe now

AutoMarketplace is the largest newsletter and podcast covering NYC’s $16 billion for-hire transportation market — tracking commercial insurance, TLC plates, taxi medallions, and trips. Proprietary indexes: AIX, APX, AYX.

AutoMarketplace.com | YouTube | Advertise

AutoMarketplace is a distribution partner for Commissioner’s Corner, the recurring column from the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission (NYC TLC) Chair.

As we recognized Disability Pride Month in July, it was an important time to reflect on the historic accessibility progress made across our fleet. Inclusion and accessibility are vital parts of our mission, and all passengers are entitled to a dignified, safe, and comfortable ride here in New York City.

Our licensees are integral to this mission.

Since June 2025, when our active yellow taxi fleet officially crossed the 50% accessibility mark, our momentum has grown. As of July 2026, almost 60% of all yellow taxis on the road are wheelchair accessible vehicles (WAVs). On top of that, in May, our Uber and Lyft fleets reached new heights, with over 65,000 WAV requests arriving in under 10 minutes, a new monthly high. And with over 14,700 combined active WAVs across our fleet, we have the largest accessible fleet in North America.

None of this would be possible without all of us working together. Our drivers are trained to secure passengers who use wheelchairs and other mobility aids, as well as to serve those with visual or hearing impairments. But it’s important everyone does their part — bases, fleets, and drivers. TLC’s Education Unit and Office of Inclusion do regular outreach and refreshers where drivers congregate, such as the JFK and LGA hold lots and the Taxi Clubhouse. We also routinely meet with members of the disability community to explore new ways to improve our service.

Speaking of improving service, I also chaired my first Commission Meeting in July and announced proposed rules that would reduce several fees and fines for drivers. Changes would include no penalties for delayed drug tests, no fine for a delayed vehicle inspection, and no fee for replacing a lost or damaged TLC license. In total, relief from these penalties and fees would represent nearly a million dollars a year that would go back into drivers’ pockets.

We are also looking to build more flexibility into the Medallion Relief Program around medallion transfers to immediate family members and their estates, and allow members of an existing partnership to remove a partner if all parties agree to the change. You can read the full rule proposal and comment here: rules.cityofnewyork.us/rule/driver-relief-penalty-reduction-and-mrp/

These proposed rules are just the beginning of our efforts to provide meaningful relief for TLC drivers. I am grateful to the TLC staff who are working so hard to try to reduce these burdens for drivers and I am looking forward to more efforts to come.

Midori Valdivia
Commissioner and Chair
Taxi and Limousine Commission

Latest from AutoMarketwire

• Zoox clears final federal hurdle to launch paid robotaxi service (TechCrunch)

• Zohran Mamdani hints he will continue taking on delivery apps like Uber Eats and DoorDash (Business Insider)

• NYC rideshare app might owe MTA millions in unpaid congestion pricing tolls (FOX 5 New York)

• Are Waymos Really More Dangerous? (Changing Lanes by Andrew Miller)

• American Transit files two RICO suits over alleged No-fault pharmacy billing (Insurance Business)

Latest from AutoMarketplace:

• No Interest Without Conflict

• Dampower: The App That Beats Uber & Lyft on Price (Don’t Ask About the Taxes)

• Federal Judge Blocks NYC Driver Deactivation Law. DCWP’s $73 Million Expansion On Hold

• David Do on Uber Lockouts, Driver Pay, TLC Plates, Taxi Medallions & AVs

Subscribe now

AutoMarketplace is the largest newsletter and podcast covering NYC’s $16 billion for-hire transportation market — tracking commercial insurance, TLC plates, taxi medallions, and trips. Proprietary indexes: AIX, APX, AYX.

AutoMarketplace.com | YouTube | Advertise

Hi, this is Dawood, founder and managing editor of AutoMarketplace.

A lot of people ask me why I am so obsessed with TLC plates, taxi medallions, and everything else in the NYC for-hire transportation market. The answer goes beyond the obvious financial interests that I, and the companies I own or work with, have. It starts in 1882, and it is not really about me. AutoMarketplace has grown, and with new ventures planned, this felt like the right time to put it all in one place.

That year, financial reporters Charles Dow, Edward Jones, and Charles Bergstresser founded Dow, Jones & Co., delivering handwritten news bulletins by messenger to the banks and brokerages around the New York Stock Exchange. They were known as flimsies, after the tissue paper they were carbon-copied onto. Those bulletins became a daily newsletter, the Customers’ Afternoon Letter, which carried Dow’s first index, assembled in 1884 and built mostly of railroad stocks, the ancestor of today’s Dow Jones Transportation Average.

Fittingly for our purposes, the most famous name in market measurement began by tracking transportation. That newsletter grew into The Wall Street Journal in 1889, with Dow as its first editor.

Here is the part fewer people know. In 1885, three years into starting their news venture, Dow became a member of the New York Stock Exchange and a partner in the brokerage firm Goodbody, Glyn & Dow, and held both until the firm dissolved in 1891. The man making that market legible, and who would go on to edit the newspaper that covered it, went and stood inside it for six years.

That is not a quirk of one man’s biography. In nascent or opaque markets, the people who first write down prices are almost always participants, because participants are the only ones who see the trades. The public record is incomplete, when it exists at all, so information moves on trust rather than filings, and the only way to earn it is to be in the market alongside the people making it. Legibility usually arrives from the inside.

That model, participant and chronicler in one person, is as old as American financial journalism itself. It is how AutoMarketplace runs today, and you deserve to know exactly how.

As many of you already know: yes, I run and own a for-hire vehicle (FHV) fleet. 23 TLC plates to be exact, held across several corporate entities known as FHV Corporations. We have never bought a plate on the secondary market. Every one was issued to us as we built a luxury-focused, all-BMW Uber Black-qualified fleet, starting in late 2016 and ending when the Taxi and Limousine Commission capped FHV plates in 2018. We also help manage plates we do not own, for clients from other fleets to single owner-drivers. Altogether the team and I oversee about 80 plates, owned and managed, and growing.

Some things we are not. We do not broker TLC plate or medallion sales, and we are not in the market as an active buyer or seller of plates. If that changes, we will say so.

What we do take is consulting work, paid for by current and prospective participants in this industry. And with the plate market capped, wheelchair accessible vehicles aside, growth on the fleet side of our business means management contracts rather than plates changing hands. That work is driver collections, regulatory compliance, and insurance risk and claims management. Both the consulting and the management work make some of the people we cover potential counterparties. Where we hold, or are negotiating, a management or consulting engagement with someone who appears in a story, we will say so.

We also have exposure to New York City taxi medallions through a direct investment in Marblegate Capital Corporation (OTCQX: MGTE), a publicly listed, yellow cab-focused specialty finance company and fleet operator. Separately, via Hudson Far West, an investment company I founded and run, I own shares in Uber and Lyft, along with other publicly listed automotive-mobility companies, including Localiza, a Brazil-based rental car business. We hold other investments unrelated to this industry, which we don’t list because they don’t touch our coverage.

On advertising. Our advertisers range from TLC insurance brokers and taxi medallion agents to fleet owners, insurance companies, and car dealerships, and sponsors are named on the product they support, whether that is the newsletter, the newswire, or the podcast. No advertiser or sponsor sees coverage before publication, sees AutoMarketplace index values before they are published, or has any say in what appears on the wire.

What we do not have is outside investors. There is no hidden cap table, and no board seat held by anyone we cover.

All of the above is a snapshot of where we are as of July 2026.

None of this was a strategy. My background is finance. Early in my career I joined Lazard, a financial advisory firm, in London, where I worked as a junior analyst on debt restructurings, for distressed clients and for investors on the other side. For example, I worked on the restructuring of a large European financial institution (how do you think I know how to analyze insurance company financial statements?).

I later moved to New York and into private credit, helping an investment firm underwrite loans for private equity deals. When I arrived in New York in early 2015, Uber had taken off here in a way it hadn’t yet in London, and I assumed Uber owned the cars. When I learned it didn’t, I saw a market. I researched it the way an operator would, including passing the TLC driver exam myself, and found an arbitrage: certified pre-owned BMWs, rented to Uber Black-qualified drivers at rates well below what fleets renting new vehicles could offer. The business grew until the plate cap froze it.

I did everything in the early years: negotiated with dealerships, drove vehicles to inspections, argued with repair shops, picked up impounded cars, and dealt with the TLC, DMV, E-ZPass, insurance carriers, claims, and Uber and Lyft themselves. I pitched drivers individually, often during rides I was taking, and dealt with drivers who didn’t pay me, and others who needed financial help to stay in business. I had traded investment prospectuses for an operating life in TLC land.

As I was thinking about the next business to move into, the pandemic arrived and the industry, along with my fleet business, fell apart. I needed basic market information to operate. Did we still have to pay the full insurance premium when our vehicles were barely moving? Did other fleets cut their rental rates in half like I did? What were plates and medallions trading at? Nobody was publishing any of it. The information that determined whether businesses in this industry lived or died circulated privately, if at all. So I started writing down what I was learning, first for myself, then for everyone else.

It is not an original way to begin. In the 1920s a used car dealer in Los Angeles named Les Kelley began circulating a list of the cars he wanted to buy and the prices he was willing to pay for them, a way to source inventory. Other dealers started using it, and so did banks, who found it the best available way to size a car loan. In 1926 he published it as the Blue Book of Motor Car Values, and a dealer’s buy list became a reference the industry underwrote against, because it came from someone actually transacting.

The difference between AutoMarketplace and other organizations is that we don’t pretend to be unconflicted. Our conflicts are precisely what let us provide insight that so many local and national outlets, looking from the outside in, simply cannot.

We speak to drivers and fleets not only as journalists, but as customers and fellow business people. Regulators and policymakers hear from us not only as reporters, but as operators whose businesses are directly impacted by the rules they write.

Our investments also do not point in one direction. Medallions, TLC plates, and Uber and Lyft equity sit in shifting alignment: a policy, ruling, or deal can lift medallions while pressuring plates, help the apps while hurting both, or benefit all three at once. On most questions in this industry, no coverage angle reliably favors "our side," because our side changes story by story. There is one exception, the autonomous vehicle (AV) question, and I'll come to it later on.

Our conflicts also let us say unpopular things. In a political moment understandably defined by cost-of-living politics, the popular narrative in this industry usually has a few villains, and the driver is rarely among them. Most of the time that narrative is right, and for a structural reason: the driver carries the risk in almost every arrangement in this business. They sign the lease or loan, absorb the downtime, pay for the damage, and have the least room to negotiate any of it.

“Predatory” rental companies exist, and we know it. But the label has been applied to an entire industry, which is why we mapped who actually owns the industry’s plates and put rental operators on the record about their own businesses, something no one else has done. We run a rental business ourselves, which you should weigh accordingly. What I can tell you is that the TLC has never once asked me, or the many fleets I speak with, about the issues we face. That’s not balanced.

The word “predatory” travels in one direction. When a driver hits a cyclist or a pedestrian, the harm is theirs first, but the claim runs against the company for years afterward, which is a large part of why commercial insurance for TLC fleets in this city costs what it does. Fleet insurance currently runs 58% above individual rates, according to the AutoMarketplace Insurance Index (AIX).

And many of those who present as unconflicted are not. Two examples:

• Regulators end up on the other side of the table. Meera Joshi chaired the TLC from 2014 to 2019. In April 2025 she joined the board of Marblegate Capital Corporation, the publicly listed medallion lender and fleet operator we are invested in, and the company's SEC filing shows $105,908 in director fees for a partial year of service. Midori Valdivia, who chairs the TLC today, was previously Joshi's deputy commissioner. All of it is disclosed, which is exactly the point. People move between regulating this industry and profiting from it, and that is worth knowing when any of us speaks about policy, including me.

  

• Autonomous vehicles put the whole architecture of driver representation in question. In a world with no drivers, one where robotaxis are proven to save lives, there is no need for a Black Car Fund, or for the New York Taxi Workers Alliance or the Independent Drivers Guild, both of which have won drivers protections that would not otherwise exist. That is an existential stake, and it should be read the way ours should: not as a reason to discount what they say, but as context for why they say it.

Government belongs on that list too, as a revenue participant collecting surcharges, fees, and taxes on every trip it regulates. So does the press: every major outlet, including the ones that cover this industry well, carries advertising from the companies it reports on. I mention all of this not to accuse anyone of malfeasance, but to make a simple point: everyone covering, regulating, or organizing this industry has a position in it. The only real choice is whether to disclose it. We disclose ours loudly.

As for whether our conflicts stop us from reporting stories that cut against our own interests, I would point to the record. More than 800 articles and podcast episodes since August 2020, plus coverage of almost every TLC commission meeting, public hearing, and industry-related City Council hearing. We have given driver advocates our platform for their unfiltered views, from the Independent Drivers Guild to the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, including when they have been in direct opposition to ours. We have criticized (sometimes aggressively) Uber and Lyft, companies we are invested in. And our reporting on American Transit and TLC rental companies speaks for itself.

The sharpest example is a number rather than an argument. Our medallion index, the AutoMarketplace Yellow Index (AYX), currently prints well below the medallion values reported by the publicly listed company we are invested in. It is built on the public Taxi and Limousine Commission transfer record, so anyone can check our work against the same source we used. That is what a conflict looks like when it is disclosed and the data is open: you can hold it against us.

We manage our conflicts, we are upfront about them, and we always will be upfront about them: when our coverage touches a specific position we hold, we will say so in that article. If you think a story or an index value is wrong, write to us. We publish corrections, along with the reason for them. And one commitment above all: if our conflicts ever strip us of the ability to be as transparent as our readers deserve, we will either stop calling ourselves a publication or divest the conflict. Our readers can decide if we are doing a good job. It is as simple, and as complicated, as that.

So, getting back to why we are so obsessed with taxi medallions and TLC plates.

The future will include autonomous vehicles (AVs), whether ubiquitous five years from now or twenty. A hybrid world of human drivers and robotaxis will exist for some time. But the endgame question is already visible: who do NYC AV license rights accrue to?

We believe drivers and fleets navigate that transition by lobbying for rights attached to the vehicle licenses they already hold. We have written about this at length and will continue to advocate for it. The concept has taken us as far as Vienna.

Medallions likely have the clearer first claim: a capped, city-issued asset with nearly nine decades of precedent. The harder fight will be over TLC plates, a larger asset class held far more broadly by drivers themselves. The yellow cab industry, and a government that once auctioned medallions for hundreds of thousands of dollars and in some cases over a million, will be deeply conflicted about extending rights to plates. But granting plate holders some AV right, even a lesser one, is the most effective way to bring the greatest number of owner-drivers through: there are only several thousand medallion owner-drivers in comparison to over 175,000 TLC-licensed drivers, plus fleets and their families, on the other side of this question.

Say the obvious part out loud, and this is the exception I promised: we hold 23 plates and manage many more, and we are invested in Marblegate. If plates win, we benefit directly. If medallions win, we benefit too. Weigh it accordingly.

And if AV rights accrue to large technology companies alone, or to some other entity, we will say so, cut our losses, and position accordingly. Driver advocates and some politicians will tell you to fight the technology, and that fight could be worthwhile: resistance is often how drivers win protections, perhaps even the rights we are describing. But the technology is coming either way. We plan to tell you what is happening, how to survive it, and hopefully how to thrive.

The vehicle licenses this industry fought over, borrowed against, and in some cases lost everything on may turn out to be the very instrument through which drivers, and others who have invested here, claim a stake in what comes next. That is why we are obsessed.

It is also why AutoMarketplace must be more than a publication. Bloomberg’s real business, after all, is selling terminals to institutions deeply invested in the markets Bloomberg News covers. We publish proprietary indexes tracking this market’s core assets and costs, TLC insurance (AIX), TLC plates (APX), taxi medallions (AYX), plate rental rates, and more, and like Dow and Jones we have paired them with a news wire. The most effective way to argue that medallions and plates should carry AV rights is to make a market in them, alongside other stakeholders, including drivers.

Which raises the sharpest conflict we have: we publish prices for assets we own. Why trust us? As we said above, we do not broker plate or medallion sales, and we are not in the market as an active buyer or seller of plates. We do buy and sell Marblegate shares from time to time.

Our indexes are also not equally verifiable, and we will tell you which is which. AYX is built on the public TLC medallion transfer record, which lags, so we adjust for that lag and publish the method. AIX is a survey-based cost index, and any fleet or driver holding a policy can check it against their own TLC liability rate. Rental rates are observable to anyone willing to make a few calls. APX is the hard one: there is no public record of plate transactions at all, so it rests on what participants tell us, and it is the series where our methodology, rather than your ability to check it, is doing the work. Each methodology is published on our website. No advertiser, sponsor, or counterparty sees a value before it goes out. When a value is revised, the revision and the reason are published alongside it. These indexes are a record of where this market has traded. They are not an appraisal, not investment advice, and not a valuation any lender should underwrite against without its own diligence.

The name was never an accident either. Automotive-mobility, like real estate, is a huge industry made up of many local markets, each with its own rules, assets, and prices. Our goal is to make them efficient, starting with New York.

None of this works without running an operating business. So we are telling you everything up front, with a standing commitment attached. Where Dow made the market legible, we intend to do the same for New York’s for-hire transportation market, and to argue openly for the future we believe is worth building, with our positions disclosed before we make the case. Our reporting and our data will tell you what is happening, whichever way it cuts, as any honest market-maker must.

Dow gave up his exchange seat in 1891 and built the Industrial Average five years later. The Kelleys closed their dealership in 1962 and sold the Blue Book, although family members continued to actively manage the pricing guide for decades. Bob Kelley later worried the guide would lose its authority without a working dealership behind it. It didn’t. The participation had already done its job. It had built the judgment Kelley Blue Book rested on, and that judgment outlasted the business that produced it.

We hope the same will one day be true of AutoMarketplace.

— Dawood Mian, Founder and Managing Editor, AutoMarketplace

Latest from AutoMarketwire

• Can Throo Compete With Uber and Lyft? (The New York Times)

• All NYC ride share apps must obey all the rules (New York Daily News)

• Uber and Lyft Dominate the Ride-Share Industry. Can Rivals Cut In? (The New York Times)

• Advocates call for stricter safety measures after 2 cabbie shootings in Brooklyn (Gothamist)

• Taxi community demands action after 2 drivers shot in less than 2 weeks (News 12 Brooklyn)

• 20% of Your Uber Fare Actually Goes to Insurance Alone: Study (The Drive)

• Rogue Delivery App Motoclick Is ‘Subverting’ Minimum Pay Law — And Admitting It (Streetsblog NYC)

• Lyft Welcomes Ben Minicucci to Board of Directors (Lyft)

• Effects of Uber and Lyft on jobs, wages and GDP (Nature)

Latest from AutoMarketplace:

• Dampower: The App That Beats Uber & Lyft on Price (Don’t Ask About the Taxes)

• Federal Judge Blocks NYC Driver Deactivation Law. DCWP’s $73 Million Expansion On Hold

• David Do on Uber Lockouts, Driver Pay, TLC Plates, Taxi Medallions & AVs

Subscribe now

AutoMarketplace is the largest newsletter and podcast covering NYC’s $16 billion for-hire transportation market — tracking commercial insurance, TLC plates, taxi medallions, and trips. Proprietary indexes: AIX, APX, AYX.

AutoMarketplace.com | YouTube | Advertise

Imagine we started a new NYC ridehailing app. Let’s call it Dampower.

The pitch to drivers:

• Flat monthly subscription, starting around $150

• Zero commission

• Keep 100% of every fare

The pitch to passengers:

• Much cheaper than Uber and Lyft

• Similar wait times

• Same drivers and vehicles

With a functional app and decent marketing, we could hopefully drive a few thousand downloads. If we executed really well, Dampower might get a lot more than that.

As you might have guessed, Dampower is Empower, and they have executed really well: a 4.8 rating across 62,000+ reviews on the App Store and more than 100,000 downloads on Google Play with a similar rating. That sounds like a resounding success story, a real alternative to the Uber and Lyft duopoly that has defined our current era of for-hire transportation.

So why are regulators, politicians, journalists, the Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC), even the MTA, seemingly hell bent on shutting this app down in New York City?

Stay with Dampower for one more minute and the answer becomes obvious.

Dampower’s Legal Theory

At Dampower, we believe that because we charge a flat subscription instead of a per-trip commission, we are a software product, not a transportation company. Yes, we do exactly what Uber and Lyft do, connect paying passengers to NYC TLC-licensed drivers. But our business model, we argue, exempts us from MTA and Black Car Fund (BCF) surcharges, sales tax on trips, licensing and data rules, and driver minimum pay standards. Specifically, we are not obligated to collect these surcharges and taxes, build them into passenger fares, and remit them to the state and city, the way Uber and Lyft do. As for insurance, TLC drivers carry their own commercial liability coverage, so every trip we send is fully insured (probably, but please consult your carrier documents).

To be clear, we are not saying those obligations aren’t real. We’re saying they aren’t ours. We are a software subscription, like QuickBooks. QuickBooks doesn’t remit your sales tax for you. Also, we’ve tried to work with New York to sort out what’s owed, but they don’t seem to want our help or money.

Frankly, we suspect Uber and Lyft are lobbying to kill Dampower. Our drivers and passengers stand with us against the corporate goliaths and the literal government. Regulators have even threatened our founder with jail time. Like the great “troublemakers” of history, she is willing to sit in a cell for the mission.

Cheaper rides for all. Better pay and dignity for drivers. Dampower!

Article continues after advertisement

No One Likes Paying Taxes, But You Should Pay Yours

The story of Dampower is the real-life story of Empower, and this week it made the tabloids. The New York Post reported that Empower’s unlicensed operations have cost the MTA millions in congestion pricing revenue. City Council Majority Leader Shaun Abreu, who currently chairs the Council’s transportation committee, called for the company to be held accountable, saying congestion pricing rules are supposed to apply fairly to everyone.

To the average person, the enforcement campaign can seem unfair. Empower offers drivers better money and passengers cheaper trips. Why is New York City trying to shut that down, especially in a market dominated by Uber and Lyft?

We’ve covered the nitty gritty of taxes and remittances before, and even helped put together a dedicated podcast on sales tax (!). We encourage you to read and listen to those details. For those who don’t have the time, here’s the quick explanation of why Empower is so controversial:

It’s not paying the taxes it owes. That’s it.

The martyrdom framing falls apart on contact with the details. Nobody is being persecuted for innovation. The dispute is over unremitted taxes and surcharges.

Take the congestion charges at the center of the Post story. Licensed taxis and for-hire vehicles are exempt from the $9 Congestion Relief Zone toll that private cars pay. Instead, passengers pay per-trip charges that the dispatching entity collects and remits: the $2.75 New York State congestion surcharge on for-hire trips below 96th Street, plus the $1.50 Congestion Relief Zone per-trip charge for trips below 60th Street. That’s $4.25 per qualifying trip. On Uber and Lyft receipts, these appear as line items. On Empower trips, they simply aren’t collected.

Now do the math. Empower’s CEO testified to over 100,000 NYC rides per week back in March, and volume is reportedly closer to 250,000 per week today. That’s roughly 1 million trips per month. If every trip qualified for the full $4.25, that would be about $4.25 million per month, or over $50 million a year, in uncollected congestion charges alone. Even if only half of those trips touch Manhattan’s congestion zones, you’re still looking at more than $25 million a year that never reaches the MTA. And that’s before counting the 8.875% sales tax and Black Car Fund contributions on every fare. “Millions in lost transit revenue” isn’t hyperbole. It may be an understatement.

If Empower Doesn’t Owe It, Who Does?

Here’s the part that should concern drivers most.

Let’s say Empower wins every argument. Let’s say a court agrees it is simply a software subscription that doesn’t owe the sales tax, the MTA surcharges that help fund city subways and buses, or the BCF contributions that fund workers’ compensation and benefit programs for TLC drivers.

Empower is not arguing these amounts aren’t owed. It’s arguing they aren’t owed by Empower.

If Empower doesn’t owe them, guess who does? The obligations don’t vanish. They attach to the only other party in the transaction (assuming the state is not coming after passengers!). Individual drivers would be responsible for registering, calculating, tracking, and remitting sales tax, MTA surcharges, and BCF contributions on every trip. Exposure that isn’t visible today can arrive later, through audit or enforcement action.

This is not hypothetical. This week, Empower’s own X account confirmed it pays 8.875% on its revenue, which we take to mean its subscription revenue, while describing the taxes on the rides themselves as fees “that riders should pay.” This is the equivalent of asking someone who bought an item on Amazon to remit the sales tax directly to the state, rather than Amazon collecting it at checkout and doing that work. Amazon collecting is obviously the efficient and accepted way. No one files their own sales tax return after buying sneakers.

The same logic follows an accident. On a trip not dispatched by a licensed TLC base, as a senior NYC taxi and for-hire vehicle insurance executive told us in February, unlicensed dispatch activity could be treated as material misrepresentation, grounds for policy cancellation, non-renewal, or premium reclassification. The workers’ compensation coverage normally funded through the Black Car Fund may simply not respond. In a market where most TLC drivers effectively have two primary liability options, non-renewal is not an inconvenience. It can end a driver’s ability to operate.

In New York City, compliance is not a cost of doing business. It is the condition for doing business. When a company structures itself so that the costs of compliance land on someone else, the someone else is not Uber, not Lyft, and not the MTA.

It’s drivers.

Latest from AutoMarketwire

• Judge orders rideshare app Empower to halt Maryland operations (The Baltimore Banner)

• Waymo’s driverless cars crash less often than people (IIHS)

• Legal Bay Lawsuit Funding Says Access to Justice—Not Litigation Funding—Should Remain the Focus in Uber Lawsuits (PR Newswire via Morningstar)

• Manhunt underway after masked gunman allegedly shoots NYC cab driver in face during overnight robbery (Fox News)

• Rideshare company with no NYC license has been conning congestion pricing and ditching millions in tolls: official (New York Post)

• Brooklyn jury to decide whether Uber drivers are contractors or employees in car crash suit (amNewYork)

• A Luxury Taxi Company Wants to Stop New York From Tracking Its Wealthy Riders (The Wall Street Journal)

Latest from AutoMarketplace:

• Federal Judge Blocks NYC Driver Deactivation Law. DCWP’s $73 Million Expansion On Hold

• David Do on Uber Lockouts, Driver Pay, TLC Plates, Taxi Medallions & AVs

Subscribe now

AutoMarketplace is the largest newsletter and podcast covering NYC’s $16 billion for-hire transportation market — tracking commercial insurance, TLC plates, taxi medallions, and trips. Proprietary indexes: AIX, APX, AYX.

AutoMarketplace.com | YouTube | Advertise

The NYC Uber and Lyft deactivation law is not taking effect on July 28th, dealing a major blow to the City Council and New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA), which fought nearly two years for the first-in-the-nation law. It also derails a planned $73 million expansion of the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP), a new compliance division of 170 staff, including 105 attorneys, built entirely around a statute that is now blocked.

2026

352KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Approximately 87,000 Uber and Lyft drivers completed more than 22 million trips in New York City in March 2026. Each company’s agreements with drivers confer broad authority over platform access, including the right to deactivate a driver without advance notice. Uber and Lyft use that authority to police the safety of their platforms and their passengers. A statute recently passed by the New York City Council—Law 52 of 2026—deprives Uber and Lyft of those contractual rights. Under the Law, Uber and Lyft may deactivate drivers only for specified reasons, and they cannot do so unless they follow procedures prescribed by the City.

[...]

On this record, because Uber and Lyft are likely to succeed in showing that the Law protects a narrow class of drivers and does not advance the broader social or economic interest which the Constitution requires to permit the severe impairment of their contracts, Plaintiffs’ motions for a preliminary injunction are granted.

Uber Technologies, Inc. v. City of New York, Nos. 1:26-cv-4893-GHW, 1:26-cv-4931-GHW (S.D.N.Y. July 21, 2026) (Woods, J.), Dkt. 48, at 1–2.

What happened?

On Tuesday, Judge Gregory H. Woods of the Southern District of New York granted Uber and Lyft’s request for a preliminary injunction, blocking New York City from enforcing Local Law 52. The ruling came five days after a July 16th hearing and exactly one week before the law was set to take effect. The decision is preliminary, but sweeping: Woods concluded the companies are likely to win, and he blocked the entire law, not just parts of it.

In a statement to AutoMarketplace, Uber’s Senior Director, Public Policy & Communications Josh Gold said:

“We’re pleased the court recognized the importance of preserving our ability to exercise discretion to protect the safety and integrity of our platform. The opinion underscores that driver fairness and rider safety can and must go hand in hand.”

In a press release, NYTWA Executive Director Bhairavi Desai said:

Judge Woods’ misguided 53-page decision boils down to one point: he claims the city’s law has to cover all of society and sees drivers as a ‘narrow class.’ It’s an extreme, pro-corporation position that would be a danger to the rights of every working person if it were allowed to stand.

The decision is a punch in the gut to New York City workers and a slap in the face of democracy, endangering the city’s ability to enact any workforce-specific regulations…This is far from over – life without poverty, job security as working people, and dignity on the job are non-negotiable. Even heartbroken – we are more determined than ever.

The case came down to the Contracts Clause, the constitutional rule that says the government cannot pass laws that rewrite existing contracts without a good enough reason. Uber and Lyft’s driver agreements have given the companies broad power to deactivate drivers, sometimes immediately and without notice, since at least 2015 and 2019 respectively.

Local Law 52 would have replaced that with the City’s rules: just cause, 14 days’ notice, progressive discipline, and appeals decided by the DCWP or a court instead of the companies. Woods found that this rewrites the core of the driver agreements, so the City needed to show the law solves a broad public problem.

In Judge Woods’ view, it does not. Woods did the math the City Council’s record never did. Uber deactivates about 1% of its NYC drivers a year. Applied across both apps, that works out to roughly 872 drivers, about 0.01% of the city’s population. Nobody claims all of those deactivations were wrongful, and none of the studies the Council relied on ever counted how many actually were. A law that helps a small group at the expense of two targeted companies, Woods concluded, is not the kind of broad public purpose the Constitution requires.

Council Member Shekar Krishnan's own words about "holding megacorporations accountable" and stripping Uber and Lyft of their role as "judge, jury, and prosecutor" were cited as evidence that the law targets two companies rather than protecting the public. Judge Woods noted that what individual legislators say does not decide a law's purpose. He did not need it to. The law only covers high-volume for-hire services, a category with exactly two companies in it.

Article continues after advertisement

What the City Council ignored hurt the City’s case just as much. At the hearing, Woods asked the City to show him anything in the record proving the Council considered how the law would affect anyone besides deactivated drivers: the passengers taking 22 million trips a month, the price of rides, or the sexual assault survivors who could be called before factfinders in some of an estimated 2,000 DCWP cases a year. The City could not. Uber went further, arguing that the prospect of testifying could discourage survivors from reporting drivers at all. The opinion notes the Council never evaluated that possibility.

The seven-year lookback, which we thought was the companies’ strongest legal card two weeks ago, fared worst. Woods held it is retroactive, plain and simple: it forces the companies to defend old decisions under rules that did not exist when they were made. Uber’s recordkeeping has changed since 2019, so a company could lose a case because the paperwork no longer exists, not because the deactivation was wrong. The driver gets reinstated either way. The same flaw runs through the whole law: a missed deadline or a vague notice can put a driver back on the road even when the misconduct was proven. Judge Woods pressed on the sharpest version of that scenario: even a driver deactivated immediately for alleged sexual assault could be ordered back onto the platform if the required five-day notice was late or not detailed enough.

Why did the whole law fall, not just the retroactive part? Because it is written as one system, with no line separating old contracts from new ones. Removing the bad piece would have meant rewriting the law, which judges cannot do. The City all but conceded the rest, admitting the anti-retaliation and recordkeeping sections “would likely serve little practical purpose” alone. So the court blocked all of it.

What now?

The City can appeal to the Second Circuit, litigate to a final ruling before a judge who has already shown his hand, or the City Council can try to rewrite the law and build the evidence the court said was missing. NYTWA is already publicly demanding the City appeal. Each of those paths runs into the same wall: the problem Judge Woods identified is the legislative record itself, and you cannot fix a record with a better brief.

There is a fourth path: negotiate directly with Uber and Lyft. The companies have signaled openness all along. Uber told the City Council in 2024 it could accept notice and process for, in Gold's words, 99% of deactivations, and asked only to narrow the edge cases. A deal along those lines would give drivers most of the law without the lawsuit. But the side that would take that deal just won, and the side that needs it is demanding an appeal instead.

Meanwhile, DCWP’s planned $73.4 million compliance division, 170 staff and 105 attorneys built entirely around this law, is frozen along with it, just as Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Speaker Julie Menin are publicly committed to growing the agency.

The political map has not changed: the Mayor, the City Council, and NYTWA on one side, Uber and Lyft on the other. Just one week before the ruling, hundreds of NYTWA members marched on Uber’s NYC headquarters, with Executive Director Bhairavi Desai telling the crowd, “Wherever these companies are, we’re going to follow them.” That energy is not going anywhere. But for the first time in this two-year fight, the companies are the ones holding a court order.

Two weeks ago we wrote that the lookback was the forgiveness coming due for a company that famously asked forgiveness instead of permission. This time, Uber, joined by Lyft, asked a judge first, and got its permission.

Latest from AutoMarketwire

• The World Cup in New York and New Jersey, by the Numbers (The New York Times)

• Report: Waymo Cars Mean Way Mo’ Traffic (Streetsblog NYC)

• Are Waymo robotaxis actually safer than NYC Uber and taxi drivers? (Gothamist)

• Amid changing industry, Chicago cabbies and rideshare drivers are both struggling (Chicago Sun-Times)

• Why Do Some Uber Drivers Use Google Maps Instead Of Uber Navigation? (BGR)

• Waymo And Uber Support Bad, Incumbent-Protecting Laws In DC And NJ (Forbes via Yahoo Finance)

• Driverless Cars Struggle to Win Over LA County Riders, Study Finds (Westside Current)

• Lyft’s CEO Says, ‘We’re the Good Uber’ (Wired)

Latest from AutoMarketplace:

• David Do on Uber Lockouts, Driver Pay, TLC Plates, Taxi Medallions & AVs

• Can Lyft Fuel a NYC Yellow Cab Trip Recovery?

Subscribe now

AutoMarketplace is the largest newsletter and podcast covering NYC’s $16 billion for-hire transportation market — tracking commercial insurance, TLC plates, taxi medallions, and trips. Proprietary indexes: AIX, APX, AYX.

AutoMarketplace.com | YouTube | Advertise

In our latest podcast, AutoMarketplace Founder and Publisher Dawood Mian sits down with former New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) Chair David Do for one of the most comprehensive interviews ever conducted on his tenure leading the nation’s largest for-hire transportation regulator.

Over the course of fifty minutes, Do reflects on the decisions that defined his time at the TLC: the driver minimum pay standard and Uber and Lyft lockouts, Green Rides, the release of electric vehicle (EV) for-hire vehicle licenses (TLC plates), enforcement, and the landmark Medallion Relief Program (MRP+) that provided nearly half a billion dollars in debt relief to struggling owner-drivers.

Rather than revisiting headlines, the conversation examines the reasoning behind those decisions and the tradeoffs involved in regulating a market that serves nearly a million trips a day: the evolution of TLC plates and the decisions around when, and whether, to release new FHV licenses; the relationship between TLC plates and taxi medallions, two asset classes shaped by the same regulator but on very different trajectories; the debate surrounding the city’s EV and wheelchair accessible vehicle (WAV) mandate (Green Rides); and the challenge of balancing driver earnings against platform economics.

The conversation is not purely diplomatic. Do names Minnesota-based lender OSK as the holdout still refusing to join MRP+ and extend debt relief to medallion owners, and he takes direct aim at platform take rates, questioning why Uber and Lyft keep up to half of some fares when it is the driver supplying the vehicle, the insurance, the gas, and the time. His own summary of the job doubles as the thesis of the episode:

“I’m particularly proud of the fact that I was not able to make everybody happy...If I made everybody happy, that might have meant that I was not doing my job.” — David Do, Former Chair, NYC Taxi & Limousine Commission

Article continues after advertisement

In This Episode

WATCH ON YOUTUBE · LISTEN ON SPOTIFY

00:00 Intro: welcoming former NYC TLC Chair David Do
01:13 Leading DC's Department of For-Hire Vehicles vs. the NYC TLC
02:42 "More than a taxi agency": labor, safety, accessibility & tech regulator
04:15 Working with the Mayor's Office, DOT, Port Authority & the legislature
06:05 Example of balancing act: drivers vs. rental companies vs. insurers
08:10 Do: "If I made everybody happy... I was not doing my job"
08:49 The Uber & Lyft driver lockouts: what happened
09:45 The driver minimum pay standard & NYC's unique utilization metric
12:06 How the apps gamed the rule, and the fix that ended lockouts
16:16 Getting sued by Uber & Lyft; "Maximize shareholder profit"
17:20 The gap: insurance costs aren't in the pay standard
18:05 Green Rides: the EV & wheelchair accessible vehicle (WAV) mandate
19:54 13,000 green vehicles, 2M+ EV trips a month, ahead of schedule
22:05 The accessibility community's pushback on the EV exemption
24:46 EV charging infrastructure: Queens Center lines, LaGuardia & JFK fast chargers
30:08 "You're releasing a free taxi medallion": plates vs. medallions
31:51 Yellow taxi recovery: farebox from under $0.5B to nearly $1B
32:27 MRP+: $470M+ in debt relief for 2,000+ small medallion owners
32:55 Calling out Minnesota-based lender OSK, the MRP+ holdout
36:16 JFK illegal hustling: 10,000 police hours on an age-old problem
40:13 Empower, market concentration & barriers to entry
41:54 "Why is Uber taking 50% of the fare?" Take rates & platform economics
44:57 Autonomous vehicles: "don't be caught flat-footed like 2015"
48:22 Final question: advice to a 25-year-old starting a TLC driving career
50:47 Closing thoughts

Latest from AutoMarketwire

• Waymo And Uber Support Bad, Incumbent-Protecting Laws In DC And NJ (Forbes via Yahoo Finance)

• NYTWA members joined @ NYCMayor today to shred @ nyctaxi penalties, fees, and fines (NYTWA / X)

• DC Robotaxi Bill Omits Wheelchair Access While Waymo and Uber Clash Over Rules (Tech Times)

• Are Waymo robotaxis actually safer than NYC Uber and taxi drivers? (Gothamist)

Latest from AutoMarketplace:

• Can Lyft Fuel a NYC Yellow Cab Trip Recovery?

• Shame on Uber! Shame on Lyft! NYTWA and Krishnan Demand Deactivation Protections

• First TLC Commission Meeting Of Mamdani Era Set For Wednesday

Subscribe now

AutoMarketplace is the largest newsletter and podcast covering NYC’s $16 billion for-hire transportation market — tracking commercial insurance, TLC plates, taxi medallions, and trips. Proprietary indexes: AIX, APX, AYX.

AutoMarketplace.com | YouTube | Advertise

A note on conflicts: this story sits directly on both sides of our book. AutoMarketplace shares ownership with entities that hold taxi medallion investments and public Lyft equity. We have disclosed our conflicts repeatedly, and a full statement on how we think about them, and why we believe they sharpen rather than distort our coverage, is coming as a standalone piece. Given how many new subscribers have joined recently, this reminder felt overdue.

As we predicted in April 2025, and again in November, Curb has finally, officially, announced it will bring "Lyft-Referred Trips" to NYC yellow cabs.

“Taxis are iconic within New York City, and we’re proud to bring the Lyft experience to cab riders and drivers here for the first time,” said Jeremy Bird, EVP of Global Growth at Lyft. “This expansion connects a well-established community of professional drivers to millions of Lyft riders, making it easier for New Yorkers to get where they’re going.” — Press Release (July 16, 2026)

Exciting news – we are expanding our Curb Flow network! Coming soon, drivers in New York will have access to Lyft trip offers through the Curb system. This enhancement will provide drivers with more trips and greater demand from riders – meaning increased chances to enhance their earning opportunities! The best part is that drivers will be able to conveniently receive all these trip offers in one place on their tablets. — Excerpt from a Curb email sent to taxi fleets in early June

The news could not have come at a better time for the city's struggling yellow cab sector, which just recorded its fourth straight month of trip declines, with new medallions going into storage for the first time since the pandemic.

Street Pulse

Given the recent struggles in the yellow cab sector, after a strong recovery throughout 2025, we’ve begun taking more taxi trips to better understand the on-the-ground operating reality for drivers.

Think of it as a more technical, less viral version of Kareem Rahma’s KEEP THE METER RUNNING! series (check it out if you haven’t). Yesterday, we took two taxi trips: Hudson Yards to Lower Manhattan in the morning, then Tribeca to Chelsea in the evening.

Taxi Trip #1: Moe, the shift driver

On our first trip, the driver, let’s call him Moe, close to seventy years old, explained that he rents his cab from Style Management on West 44th Street in Hell’s Kitchen. He pays about $120 per 12-hour shift, five days a week, for a wheelchair-accessible Ford Transit that is a few model years old. (As a side note, it’s unusual to find shift drivers these days, as most drivers rent their cabs 24/7 and don’t split with another driver.)

Moe said he does roughly 20 trips per day, with 6 or 7 (~30%) being e-hails from Uber, Curb, and Arro, and nets about $300 per day after expenses. Moe, who has driven a taxi since 2009, said he has received several offers to buy a medallion, including one with zero-down financing, but prefers the flexibility of shift driving. In his view, the earnings are simply not there to justify a full investment in a medallion.

His major complaint is the upfront fare, meaning what the taximeter immediately reads when someone hails a cab off the street, which he blames for killing a lot of trip volume. Although yellow cab trips are often cheaper than the equivalent app-hailed Uber or Lyft trip, Moe's point about taximeter sticker shock is worth considering. In Manhattan, a passenger can face a fare of almost $8 by simply sitting down in a cab, before it moves a single block, because of a string of surcharges, most of them MTA-related.

Article continues after advertisement

Taxi Trip #2: Abdul, the former medallion owner

On our second trip, the driver, let’s call him Abdul, explained that he rents his cab from Team Systems in Long Island City and pays $1,150 per week for a newer model year, wheelchair-accessible, hybrid Toyota Sienna. We also explained to Abdul the connection between the company he rents from and Marblegate’s Signal Taxi fleet, which he found interesting. He pays about $60 for gas every two days. The taxi was very well kept.

Abdul, a former medallion owner who said his medallion was foreclosed upon during the pandemic, walked us through his math. He typically does 15 to 16 trips per day, of which 4 to 5 (~30%) are app-originated hails. He nets about $325 to $375 per day, or as he put it, “it takes me 3, maybe 3.5 days to pay the lease.”

Why Lyft’s Curb Partnership Matters

As you can hopefully tell from the above, yellow cab drivers are not making great money versus their expenses, especially if a driver owns, or needs to service the debt on, a taxi medallion. A net of $300 to $325 per day equates to an annual income between $75,000 and $90,000, depending on how many days a driver works.

AutoMarketplace’s Yellow Index (AYX), which tracks NYC taxi medallion prices, is down 10.9% year-to-date to $102,500, and yellow cab trips were down 13.2% in May. Taxi trip trends need to reverse and driver earnings need to go up. Whether that means the Taxi and Limousine Commission should consider limiting the WAV exemption to the TLC Plate Cap, cracking down on illegal operators, or amending the Green Rides mandate, Lyft dispatching to the city’s yellow cabs is a positive development. Between their own street hail base and dispatch access to both major apps, yellow cabs now participate in channels representing over 90% of all for-hire trips in New York City.

Not everyone will cheer. FHV “black car” drivers, already fighting deactivations, may reasonably view every Lyft trip dispatched to a taxi as a trip taken out of their earnings. The apps are effectively adding supply without adding vehicles (except for WAVs), and in a market where drivers on both sides feel squeezed, taxis being able to access Uber and Lyft is one sector’s win coming partly at another’s expense. But that’s kind of the point, given how much yellow cab medallion owners paid for their asset and its implied rights. To many in the taxi industry, this isn’t taking FHV trips. It’s taking back share that was stolen from them, trips medallion owners paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to exclusively serve.

That said, there is only so much policy can do to help an industry. If the trip data doesn’t soon reflect a recovering market, the taxi industry may need to re-underwrite itself: how it markets to passengers, whether vehicles are being properly maintained and drivers properly trained, whether it needs to advertise more, and ultimately how much it charges for leases and medallions in order to attract more drivers.

Latest from AutoMarketwire

• Uber and Waymo Are Sparring. The Robotaxi Future Has Arrived (Bloomberg)

• App Drivers Protest Uber and Lyft’s Legal Fight Against Deactivation Law (The City Reporter)

• What would Waymo mean for jobs and safety in DC? (NBC4 Washington)

  • ‘“One AV [autonomous vehicle] takes the work of four drivers, and that’s real,” an Uber representative said.”’

• Uber’s product chief on hotels, robotaxis, and why the company doesn’t want to be ‘everything for everyone’ (TechCrunch)

Latest from AutoMarketplace:

• Shame on Uber! Shame on Lyft! NYTWA and Krishnan Demand Deactivation Protections

• First TLC Commission Meeting Of Mamdani Era Set For Wednesday

• NYTWA Plans Protest at Uber’s NYC HQ as Deactivation Law Heads to Federal Court. DCWP’s $73 Million Hangs in the Balance

Subscribe now

AutoMarketplace is the largest newsletter and podcast covering NYC’s $16 billion for-hire transportation market — tracking commercial insurance, TLC plates, taxi medallions, and trips. Proprietary indexes: AIX, APX, AYX.

AutoMarketplace.com | YouTube | Advertise

So basically, they fire you and then they gag you and then they starve you and then they toss you out, regardless of the years that you have worked on this job, regardless of how many people you have served, how many people you have brought safely to their homes, and regardless of how much money you have made for these companies through all these years. — Bhairavi Desai, Executive Director, New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA)

New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA) members showed up in force during yesterday’s protest against Uber and Lyft’s request to block Local Law 52, the driver deactivation protection law set to go into effect on July 28th. The law bars Uber and Lyft from deactivating NYC TLC-licensed drivers without just cause or a bona fide economic reason and requires 14 days’ notice in most cases.

Unless a judge blocks it, on July 28th the law shifts the burden of proof onto the companies and gives deactivated drivers an appeals path through the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) or the courts, with back pay and reinstatement as remedies. Drivers deactivated in the seven years before the effective date get a one-year window to petition for reinstatement. The preliminary injunction hearing is tomorrow, Thursday, 10am, July 16th, at 500 Pearl Street in lower Manhattan. Desai told the crowd NYTWA will be in the courtroom: “Wherever these companies are, we’re going to follow them.”

Below, with permission from NYTWA, we share footage from the protest, including speeches by Desai, NYC Council Member Shekar Krishnan (the original sponsor of Intro 276, which became Local Law 52), and Saif Aizah, an NYC TLC-licensed driver who was deactivated by Uber (he still appears to work for Lyft) and subsequently filed for personal bankruptcy. “I have a loan of $65,000. I have rent to pay,” Saif told the crowd. “Uber and Lyft have to know that when somebody gets deactivated, it’s not just a driver. They have a family they got to feed.”

We also share the NY Taxi Worker Alliance’s official press release below.

Article continues after advertisement

TABLE OF CONTENTS
0:00 "Shame on Uber, Shame on Lyft" | Bhairavi Desai opens
1:21 What the law actually does, due process and notice
2:44 Desai: "Uber is lying" about serious misconduct deactivations
4:08 "They fire you, they gag you, they starve you"
8:00 NYC Council Member Shekar Krishnan speaks
12:10 Chants: "Uber is lying, Lyft is lying"
13:16 Desai on inflation, falling trips per driver
17:48 The timeline: two council votes, a veto, an override
18:37 Court hearing details, 10am, Thursday July 16th, 500 Pearl Street
19:29 Saif Aizah's story: deactivation and bankruptcy
22:32 Allies from the labor and civil rights movements

NYTWA Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Tuesday, July 14, 2026

Contact:

Eliza Bates, 646.285.8491, Media@nytwa.org

HUNDREDS OF NYC UBER & LYFT DRIVERS & ALLIES RALLIED OUTSIDE UBER HEADQUARTERS TO PROTEST BILLIONAIRE CORPORATIONS’ ATTEMPT TO BLOCK JUST CAUSE

NYTWA members fought for over three years and won the most comprehensive just cause protections in the nation, but Uber and Lyft are suing our city to stop Local Law 52 from going into effect (City Council bill Intro 276)

City Council Member Shekar Krishnan, AALDEF, Workers Justice Project/Deliveristas, and The Legal Aid Society were among the allies that joined hundreds of NYC Uber and Lyft drivers at today’s protest

NEW YORK– Today, hundreds of NYTWA members who earn their living driving for Uber and Lyft rallied to protest their billionaire corporate boss’ lawsuit to block the just cause protections that drivers won after fighting for over three years. Allies from the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), Workers Justice Project/Deliveristas (who also recently won just cause protections), and The Legal Aid Society joined Uber and Lyft drivers at today’s protest, as well as City Council Member Shekar Krishnan, the lead sponsor of the just cause protections bill.

CLICK HERE FOR THE LIVESTREAM AND HERE FOR VIDEO OF PROTESTERS CHANTING. (All members of the media have permission to use this video with credit to the New York Taxi Workers Alliance)

When the New York City Council overwhelmingly overrode former Mayor Adams veto of Intro 276 in January - now Local Law 52 - NYTWA members won the most comprehensive legal protections against unfair deactivations in the nation. Local Law 52 is slated to go into effect on July 28th, 2026, ending the threat of unfair firings for almost 100,000 Uber and Lyft drivers in New York City.

But billionaire corporations Uber and Lyft are now suing New York City to stop just cause protections from going into effect. Oral arguments for the suit will take place this Thursday, July 16 at 10 AM in Courtroom 12C of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Daniel Patrick Moynihan U.S. Courthouse at 500 Pearl Street, New York, New York, 10007.

Without much-needed just cause protections, Uber and Lyft drivers can be left without income overnight, plunged into debt and despair, fired for any reason, or no reason at all. Drivers often have no idea why they were deactivated and have no effective way to appeal deactivations. Local Law 52 addresses the crisis of unfair deactivations by providing an independent appeal process and making it unlawful for Uber and Lyft to fire drivers without just cause and, in non-egregious cases, without advance notice or progressive discipline.

NYTWA Executive Director Bhairavi Desai (she/her), said, “Uber and Lyft are desperate to maintain their business model of driver exploitation. Now, these billionaire corporations are suing to try to block our just cause victory, lying about what Local Law 52 does and using arguments their own representatives have already debunked. To be clear: Local Law 52 protects both drivers and passengers by creating due process for the hundred thousand New Yorkers who support their families driving for Uber and Lyft while allowing the companies to immediately deactivate any driver accused of gross misconduct. New Yorkers deserve just cause protections and we won’t let these uber greedy giglords rob us of our victory.”

Saif Aizah, Lyft driver and NYTWA member who was unjustly fired by Uber, said, “Shame on Uber and Lyft for trying to block our just cause victory. Uber only looks at us like dollar signs, but when someone gets deactivated it’s not just the driver who suffers, it’s our families too. Because Uber deactivated me unfairly without giving me a chance to defend myself, I’m drowning in so much debt that I filed for bankruptcy. I have a loan of $65,000, I have rent I cannot pay. The stress and frustration from suddenly losing my livelihood has affected my health, mentally and physically. We fought to win just cause protections so that other drivers and their families don’t have to go through what I suffered, and that’s why we’re going to keep fighting.”

Local Law 52 mirrors existing NYC just cause laws for fast-food workers, which have held up to court challenges by industry bosses, and aligns with TLC/OATH procedures already used for taxi drivers. In their lawsuit, Uber claims that reviewing past deactivations would be an “undue burden” but their own representative offered to review prior deactivations cases when testifying before the City Council. Uber also falsely claims, in an apparent attempt to scare the public, that Local Law 52 would force them to maintain unsafe drivers but Local Law 52 allows Uber and Lyft to immediately deactivate drivers accused of gross misconduct with no advance notice.

Last year, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) released a report revealing a troubling pattern of unjust firings by Uber and Lyft that strip drivers of their livelihoods without notice, evidence, or an opportunity to defend themselves. Deactivated drivers were largely long-time, high-performing workers with excellent ratings and no records of misconduct. Yet, without warning, they were suddenly locked out of their accounts and cut off from their income.

Uber and Lyft drivers are overwhelmingly immigrants and people of color. Many are muslim or sikh. Complaints against drivers are often racially motivated and a 2023 survey found that Uber and Lyft were more likely to deactivate drivers of color. Int. 276 would address racial bias by creating a transparent and fair process.

“Uber and Lyft drivers keep this city moving; they are workers who deserve dignity and basic workers’ rights. Our New York City Council stands with workers and will continue to fight to ensure all app-based drivers have basic due process protections, so they are not unfairly deprived of their livelihoods without notice or an opportunity to appeal. I look forward to these protections being upheld in court and drivers no longer fearing a loss of income overnight,” said Council Member Shekar Krishnan.

“There is no constitutional right for a corporation to treat its workforce arbitrarily or abusively and to deny workers the most basic opportunity to defend against false and discriminatory accusations. We see now that Uber and Lyft’s much-touted flexibility is really flexibility to discard drivers at will with no accountability,” said Richard Blum, Staff Attorney, the Employment Law Unit of The Legal Aid Society.

###

About the New York Taxi Workers Alliance

Founded in 1998, the New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA) is the over 28,000-member strong union of NYC taxicab drivers, representing yellow cab drivers, green car, and black car drivers, including drivers for Uber and Lyft. We fight for justice, rights, respect and dignity for the over 150,000 licensed men and women who often labor 12 hour shifts with little pay and few protections in the city’s mobile sweatshop. Our members come from every community, garage, and neighborhood. To find out more visit NYTWA.org, follow us on twitter.com/nytwa or like us on facebook.com/nytwa.

New York Taxi Workers Alliance | media@nytwa.org | NYTWA.org

Latest from AutoMarketwire

• App Drivers Protest Uber and Lyft’s Legal Fight Against Deactivation Law (The City Reporter)

• What would Waymo mean for jobs and safety in DC? (NBC4 Washington)

  • ‘“One AV [autonomous vehicle] takes the work of four drivers, and that’s real,” an Uber representative said.”’

• Uber’s product chief on hotels, robotaxis, and why the company doesn’t want to be ‘everything for everyone’ (TechCrunch)

• Uber’s robotaxi lobbying effort puts it on a collision course with Waymo (TechCrunch)

Latest from AutoMarketplace:

• First TLC Commission Meeting Of Mamdani Era Set For Wednesday

• NYTWA Plans Protest at Uber’s NYC HQ as Deactivation Law Heads to Federal Court. DCWP’s $73 Million Hangs in the Balance

• Yellow Cab Trips Fall 13% as 1,090 New TLC-Plated WAVs Come Online. Time To Reconsider the WAV Exemption?

Subscribe now

AutoMarketplace is the largest newsletter and podcast covering NYC’s $16 billion for-hire transportation market — tracking commercial insurance, TLC plates, taxi medallions, and trips. Proprietary indexes: AIX, APX, AYX.

AutoMarketplace.com | YouTube | Advertise

The New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) will hold a public meeting this Wednesday, July 15th at 10am. This will be the first meeting for the city’s for-hire transportation regulator under the Mamdani administration and newly confirmed Chair Midori Valdivia. The meeting will take place at 33 Beaver Street, 19th Floor in Lower Manhattan. A live webcast is also available at www.nyc.gov/tlc.

Article continues after advertisement

Agenda

The meeting, which we will share a recording of later this week, will be focused on:

1. Base application approvals and renewals

2. The results of a recent TLC driver survey

3. A report on airport enforcement by Ira Goldapper, the Deputy Commissioner for Uniformed Services Bureau (a/k/a TLC Police). We share Mr. Goldapper’s previous Commission presentation from August 14, 2024 below.

Latest from AutoMarketwire

• Uber’s Autonomous Vehicle Strategy: Slow Their Adoption (Wired)

• MTA and Mamdani tout a new day for NYC buses after Eric Adams stalled projects (Gothamist)

• Uber Targets Litigation Funders in Rider, Driver Agreements (Bloomberg Law)

• Brooklyn man sentenced for high-speed chase in stolen NYC taxi across New Jersey (News 12 New Jersey)

• D.A. Bragg Announces Homicide Charges In Wrong-Way Drunk Driving Crash That Killed Uber Passenger On West Side Highway (Manhattan District Attorney’s Office)

• Taxi! The History of NYC’s Iconic Yellow Cabs (Hagerty)

Latest from AutoMarketplace:

• NYTWA Plans Protest at Uber’s NYC HQ as Deactivation Law Heads to Federal Court. DCWP’s $73 Million Hangs in the Balance

Subscribe now

AutoMarketplace is the largest newsletter and podcast covering NYC’s $16 billion for-hire transportation market — tracking commercial insurance, TLC plates, taxi medallions, and trips. Proprietary indexes: AIX, APX, AYX.

AutoMarketplace.com | YouTube | Advertise

We are suing New York City to block a reckless new law that seeks to strip our ability to immediately remove potentially dangerous drivers and fraudsters from our platform, creating an immediate threat to public safety. — Uber

Remind the billionaires: No Driver! No Uber! No Driver! No Lyft! We won’t sit back and let any power-hungry billionaire corporations stop us from establishing the job security drivers deserve. — New York Taxi Workers Alliance

Just another day in NYC taxiland.

What’s going on and why?

Next Tuesday, July 14th at 1pm, the New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA) will protest in front of Uber's NYC headquarters in lower Manhattan, two days before a federal court will consider Uber and Lyft's request to block Local Law 52, a driver deactivation protection law, from taking effect on July 28th.

The law bars Uber and Lyft from deactivating NYC TLC-licensed drivers without just cause or a bona fide economic reason and requires 14 days’ notice in most cases. It shifts the burden of proof onto the companies and gives deactivated drivers an appeals path through the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) or the courts, with back pay and reinstatement as remedies. Drivers deactivated in the seven years before the effective date get a one-year window to petition for reinstatement.

Getting here took nearly two years, a last minute veto from an outgoing Mayor, a City Council override, and a public war between the city’s two most influential driver advocacy groups.

Taxiland.

The Timeline

September 27, 2024: Intro 276, sponsored by NYC Council Member Shekar Krishnan, gets its first hearing before the City Council's Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. Krishnan presses Uber's Josh Gold on the presumption of innocence.

You would agree obviously that everyone…in our legal system is innocent, until proven guilty…Right, you agree with that? — Shekar Krishnan

December 18, 2025: After clearing the Council’s Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure 6-2, the full NYC Council passes Intro 276 by a vote of 40 to 7, with 1 abstention. Majority Leader Amanda Farías votes no, questioning whether the bill is fiscally responsible or meaningfully helps workers.

New York City should not spend $23 million a year on a system that does not guarantee independent arbitration or meaningful worker representation. I remain committed to working…to advance a version of this legislation that is fair, accountable, and fiscally responsible. — Amanda Farías

December 31, 2025: Mayor Eric Adams vetoes the bill just before he leaves office.

January 29, 2026: After the newly appointed Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, led by new Majority Leader Shaun Abreu, clears it 9-0, the Council overrides the veto 46-5. Farías, no longer Majority Leader in the new session, votes to override the veto of the bill she opposed in December. Intro 276 becomes Local Law 52 of 2026, effective in 180 days.

June 9, 2026: Uber sues in Manhattan federal court to block the law, raising First Amendment and due process claims and accusing New York City of encouraging "kangaroo" proceedings. Lyft follows roughly 24 hours later, calling the law "hazardous." Both seek preliminary injunctions. Speaker Julie Menin and Krishnan respond that the Council will defend the law in court.

June 25, 2026: The City moves to dismiss, arguing the law "will have a positive impact on thousands of Drivers by requiring Services to adhere to practices, many of which they claim to already be following."

July 14, 2026: NYTWA plans to march on Uber's NYC headquarters in lower Manhattan.

July 16, 2026: Federal court hearing on the preliminary injunction motions.

July 28, 2026: Local Law 52 effective date, unless a judge says otherwise.

Article continues after advertisement

$73 Million DCWP Buildout Money

To administer the new driver deactivation protections, the Mayor's Office of Management and Budget projected $73.4 million over four years for DCWP: a new compliance division of 170 staff, including 105 attorneys, built for an assumed 2,000 deactivation cases per year. The $23 million annual run rate is the figure behind then-Majority Leader Farías's original objection.

The scale is hard to overstate. DCWP’s entire FY2026 adopted budget was $75.1 million, with 475 budgeted positions. For the recently adopted FY2027 budget, ending June 30th of next year, DCWP’s budget is $78.4 million. Fully funded, the Uber and Lyft driver deactivation law alone would grow the agency’s budget by roughly 30% and its headcount by more than a third, pushing DCWP past $100 million for the first time.

For comparison, the Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC), the agency that licenses and regulates the city’s entire for-hire transportation industry, operated FY2026 on a $58.1 million budget. TLC’s adopted FY2027 budget is $69.6 million, but that includes a one-off $12.6 million allocation to the Medallion Loan Guarantee Program Reserve Fund, putting the underlying TLC budget around $57 million. DCWP’s deactivation compliance division alone would run roughly 40% of the TLC’s entire budget.

The financial buildout of DCWP fits a broader trajectory. Mayor Zohran Mamdani and City Council Speaker Julie Menin have both called for significant budget increases to expand the capabilities of the agency, now led by Commissioner Samuel A. A. Levine.

The stakes before the federal court go beyond the law itself. An injunction would remove the statutory justification for one of the largest expansions in DCWP’s history, at the very moment the Mayor and the Speaker are publicly committed to growing the agency. Uber and Lyft’s lawsuits are, functionally, also lawsuits against that expansion.

Forgiveness Comes Due

The deactivation bill pitted the city’s two most influential driver advocacy groups against one another. The Independent Drivers Guild (IDG), which has represented app-based drivers under a funding arrangement with Uber, opposed it: IDG President Brendan Sexton warned the law would push the companies to funnel serious complaints to the TLC for career-ending commercial driver license revocations, and that it would kill the one process that currently gets deactivated drivers reinstated quickly, IDG’s own appeals process.

The New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA) championed the bill, with Executive Director Bhairavi Desai dismissing IDG’s warnings as “a page from their master’s playbook.” Set the jab aside; the structural point is simpler. IDG’s appeals process exists because Uber funds it. Once every driver can take a deactivation to DCWP or to court regardless of how any company process ends, Uber has little reason to keep paying for one, and one of IDG’s signature function likely goes with it. IDG, in other words, is fighting a law that ends its own role, which does not make its warnings wrong, but does explain the fervor. Whether the process’s demise is a flaw in the law or the point of it depends on where you sit.

Either way, the political scoreboard is not close now. Desai is a close confidant of Mayor Mamdani’s, the Mayor even appeared at NYTWA’s offices the night before City Council’s initial vote on the driver deactivation bill. Even a courtroom win would leave Uber and Lyft operating in a city where the Mayor, the Council, and the dominant driver organization are aligned against them.

Everyone loves to hate Uber, and to a lesser extent Lyft. Billionaires, big tech, oligarchs; we get it, and the companies have supplied plenty of their own reasons over the years. But strip the branding and run the argument from first principles, and Uber and Lyft have a real grievance. If a taxi garage fires a driver, no DCWP hearing follows. If a traditional black car base like Carmel cuts off a driver, or an unlicensed operator like Empower does, same answer. Only two companies in the market owe drivers just cause, 14 days’ notice, and a burden of proof. On its face, that is unequal treatment of competitors, and it does feel unfair. Why is NYC interfering with how Uber and Lyft conduct their own business? Is this the socialism we were warned about?

The answer is market power. Uber and Lyft control roughly 4 out of every 5 for-hire trips in NYC. A driver dropped by a garage can drive somewhere else; a driver deactivated by both apps has lost the market. When you hold that kind of market share and position, you should expect to live under different rules; if Con Edison decides it does not like us, it cannot cut off our power or charge us more than the customer next door, and nobody calls that unfair. The Council wrote the same principle into the statute itself: Local Law 52 applies only to “high-volume for-hire vehicle services,” a trip-volume threshold that captures exactly two companies. The differential treatment is not an oversight. It is the law’s architecture, and it is how regulation has always treated scale.

The lookback deserves a harder look than the companies’ complaints give it. Seven years sounds excessive, and retroactivity is genuinely Uber and Lyft’s strongest legal card: courts are rightly skeptical of applying today’s evidentiary rules to yesterday’s conduct, documented by records nobody knew to keep. But look at what the lookback actually demands. No back pay, no penalties. A driver deactivated in 2020 gets a petition, and if the company cannot justify the old decision, they get their access back. The worst case for Uber is reinstating a driver it could not show cause against, which is another way of saying the worst case is undoing a mistake.

Uber expanded into cities like New York by asking forgiveness instead of permission, as the headlines put it over a decade ago. The lookback is the forgiveness coming due. No fine for the past, just a request to make affected drivers whole in the cheapest currency there is: a login.

Latest from AutoMarketwire

• The Dangerous Myth of Flexibility (The American Prospect)

• Nearly 20,000 NYC taxi, livery and rideshare drivers win $140 million settlement in 20-year-old case (amNewYork)

• When driving a cab can get you killed (American Thinker)

Subscribe now

AutoMarketplace is the largest newsletter and podcast covering NYC’s $16 billion for-hire transportation market — tracking commercial insurance, TLC plates, taxi medallions, and trip trends. Proprietary indexes: AIX, APX, AYX.

AutoMarketplace.com | YouTube | Advertise

Yesterday we got into a yellow cab and started talking to our driver.

We’ll call him Bob. Bob is an owner-driver who bought his medallion for around $300,000 in the early 2000s. He carries about $40,000 of remaining medallion-related debt, pays roughly $2,000 per month towards the loan, and expects to be free and clear by the end of next year. He drives five to six days a week, is on the road for roughly 12 hours a day, and grosses $400 to $500 daily. Half his trips are traditional street hails. The other half come through e-hail apps, mostly Uber and Curb, though Lyft has recently started sending him trips too.

Bob described business as “so-so.” Based on the latest TLC data, we would describe it as bad-bad. Yellow cab trips have now declined year-over-year for four consecutive months: -6.8%, -7.1%, -7.0%, and -13.2% through May. The whiplash is severe. In May 2025, trips were up 22.1%, and as recently as December, the sector was still growing at a double-digit clip before decelerating to +5.2% in January and turning negative in February.

Nobody has cleanly explained the decline. We made the case to readers that the city’s Green Rides Initiative, which requires a rising share of Uber and Lyft trips to be serviced by an all-electric (EV) or wheelchair-accessible (WAV) vehicle, could be the quirky policy culprit behind the yellow cab industry’s struggles. Others point to Empower, the controversial app that offers lower trip prices to passengers and only charges drivers a flat subscription fee, but does not appear to be paying required taxes and surcharges and is not properly insured (“disruption”).

Some fleets tell us off-meter trips, where drivers collect cash directly from passengers, are growing. And there is always the long-running trend of TLC-plated FHVs doing Uber and Lyft simply taking share from taxis, although Uber and Lyft now dispatch to cabs as well. All fair theories. The answer is probably some combination.

Bob was surprised to hear the overall industry’s numbers were that bad. But as we talked, and cross-referenced what he told us against the citywide data and other conversations we’ve had with drivers, something clicked.

In May, across roughly 10,360 working yellow cabs (over 2,750 medallions remain in storage), the average driver was on the road 23.2 days and worked 7.4 hours per day. The TLC’s fatigued driving rules cap drivers at 10 passenger-carrying hours per day and 60 per week. Bob, running 12-hour shifts with an estimated 9 to 10 passenger hours, is working at or near the regulatory ceiling, roughly 2 hours per day more than the average driver. The average taxi grossed roughly $392 per day in May. Bob’s extra hours cleanly explain his above-average earnings.

The second thing separating Bob from the pack: he accepts nearly every app-hail that comes his way. Many drivers tell us they routinely decline Curb and Uber trips, citing low fares. Bob takes them. Whether his approach reflects a desire to never roam empty, or simply the reality that there are no longer enough of the often more profitable street hail trips to go around, is an open question. What is not in question is the arithmetic: a shrinking pool of trips is being distributed across a yellow cab fleet that grew over the past year, which is precisely why medallions are now heading back into storage. Not a good trend.

With Uber and Lyft trips growing 4.9% in May, and over 1,000 net new TLC-plated WAVs issued since April 2025 through the exemption to the FHV License Pause (the “TLC Plate Cap”), the regulator should be asking hard questions. In our understanding, many of those new WAVs were formerly used as yellow cabs. The questions: whether the WAV exemption needs a cap, and what is actually driving the yellow cab decline, before another medallion crisis unfolds. Although the overall TLC-plated fleet has about 2,020 fewer FHVs than in April 2025, the addition of WAVs may be offsetting healthy attrition. That attrition would otherwise help balance supply and demand, pull more medallions out of storage, and lift not just taxi driver earnings, but wages across the entire industry.

The cause of declining yellow cab trips may be a combination of dynamics, but four consecutive months of declines, while the overall market grows, demands investigation, especially given that the city helped facilitate over $470 million of medallion debt relief, backed in part by a municipal guarantee and taxpayer-funded programs.

We share the rest of our monthly Factbook update, with additional details, below.

Article continues advertisement

NYC Taxi & FHV Trip and Utilization Rate Trends

First, it should be mentioned the TLC publishes data for “FHV - Other,” which represents traditional black car, livery, and luxury base dispatches (think Carmel or Dial 7), with a one-month delay, and usually revises the prior month’s previously disclosed figures. FHV - Other typically represents between 7% and 9% of total industry trips.

With that noted, here are the latest industrywide trends.

All trips. Based on the latest TLC Factbook, in April 2026 (the most recent month with complete industrywide data), all for-hire trips increased 3.6% year-on-year (YoY) to 893,976 average daily trips, continuing a modest but positive growth trend that has ranged between 1.7% and 4.1% since the beginning of the year.

Uber and Lyft, or “high-volume” (HV) services. In May 2026, HV trips increased 4.9% YoY to 713,734 average daily trips. Based on disclosed TLC market shares and AutoMarketplace analysis (plus estimates), Uber’s TLC-plated FHV trip growth was 2.1%, while Lyft grew 11.9%. Lyft’s market share relative to Uber broke 30%, the first time that has happened since we began tracking monthly market share in early 2025. Of note, Uber e-hails sent to yellow cabs are not included in Uber trip counts.

Uber and Lyft utilization rates (UR). Utilization rate is how busy (utilized) Uber and Lyft keep NYC drivers logged into their platforms. Put simply, if a TLC driver is logged into Uber for 10 hours in a day and spends five of those hours with a passenger, the UR is 50%. In April 2026, Uber’s UR was 51.9%, down from 54.4% a year earlier, while Lyft’s UR held steady at 52.4% versus 52.2%. Year-to-date industrywide UR is 54.0%. The divergence is worth watching: Uber trips are growing, but its drivers are spending less of their logged-in time with passengers, a sign that driver (vehicle) supply on the platform is growing faster than trip demand.

Other FHV bases. The TLC revises non-HV base data often. The latest Factbook shows sector trips down 4.1% in March and 1.3% in April.

Green cabs. The green cab, or street hail livery (SHL), sector continues to experience historic distress. In May 2026, trips declined 18.9% YoY. There are currently only 539 working green cabs.

Decline in Medallion Prices

10,800 taxi medallions were listed as active in May, with an estimated 135 returning to storage during the month. This was the first net-negative month for activations in at least two years, and the largest monthly increase in stored medallions since pandemic-related lows. Of those 10,800 medallions, 10,360 (95.9%) completed at least one trip during the month. Compared to May 2019, there are 11.8% fewer working yellow cabs on the road. More concerning: trips per working cab are running 43% below their 2019 level, a sign that the sector’s utilization remains stressed.

AutoMarketplace’s Yellow Index (AYX) currently puts cash prices for city taxi medallions at $102,500, up 7.9% YoY, though down 10.9% year-to-date and 12.8% from November 2025 highs of $117,500. That recent softening may reflect the same trip declines described above.

Green Rides Milestone

In May 2026, the industry hit a Green Rides Initiative (GRI) milestone: 24.1% of all Uber and Lyft dispatches in the five boroughs were serviced by either an EV or WAV. With compliance measured on a calendar-year basis, the sector appears on pace to meet 2026’s 25% requirement. The open question is what happens next. The benchmark jumps to 40% in 2027, and there are lingering questions about whether that step-up will be delayed or revised. If Green Rides is in fact contributing to the yellow cab sector’s trip declines, as we’ve argued it may be, that pressure is only set to intensify.

Latest from AutoMarketwire

• New study: NYC's congestion pricing cut cars by 21% & trucks by 18%! Result? EMS response times dropped by 5-6%! (Open Plans)

• Deputy Mayor & TLC Commissioner at JFK giving out cold water to drivers in dangerous heat (NY Taxi Workers Alliance)

• Will NYC get to veto Uber, Lyft decisions on drivers? (The Black Chronicle)

• NYC plans to replace nearly 30K parking spaces with trash bins, report shows (Gothamist)

• Wheely v. NYC Brief: Rideshare Companies Shouldn’t Have to Give the Government All Passenger and Trip Data (CATO Institute)

• Robotaxis Are Here. So Why Aren’t They Taking Over? (Bloomberg)

Subscribe now

AutoMarketplace is the largest newsletter and podcast covering NYC’s $16 billion for-hire transportation market — tracking commercial insurance, TLC plates, taxi medallions, and trip trends. Proprietary indexes: AIX, APX, AYX.

AutoMarketplace.com | YouTube | Advertise

AutoMarketplace is now a distribution partner for Commissioner’s Corner, the recurring column from the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission (NYC TLC) Chair. The column is also published in Black Car News. The column reflects the Commissioner’s views, not ours; our own reporting on the issues she raises runs separately. In this July column Chair Midori Valdivia reports results from the agency’s driver survey of nearly 4,000 licensees, and previews Operation Legal Ride, the JFK enforcement effort launched in June with the Port Authority.

For the last three months, TLC’s leadership team and I have been visiting drivers where they work, eat, and pray to learn about the issues that are most affecting their day-to-day lives. I want to thank the drivers, community members, and industry stakeholders for inviting us to break bread with you, hear your stories, and improve the feedback loop to help address problems.

Our listening tour has been bolstered by a first-of-its-kind survey that polled licensees about their top concerns and which issues TLC should prioritize. The results are now online at: https://www.nyc.gov/assets/tlc/downloads/pdf/driver_survey_summary.pdf

After collecting almost 4,000 responses, there were some clear areas of frustration: lack of curb space for pickups and drop-offs, poor bathroom access, and hustling were among the topics drivers said most impacted their daily lives. These longstanding issues affect working conditions, health, and the ability to earn a living. But my message to licensees is this: I hear you and see you – and TLC will pursue policies and priorities that work to ease these burdens.

Addressing these issues will require many to work with us. We will need partnerships and support from other agencies and community groups, creativity, and persistence. One area where efforts are beginning to come together is the airports. In June, just in time for the World Cup, we joined our enforcement and local partners at JFK to officially unveil Operation Legal Ride – a joint effort with the Port Authority to crack down on hustlers who steal trips from legitimate, licensed drivers.

The Operation includes uniformed TLC Police at the terminals, where they will deter hustlers and help direct visitors to safe and licensed drivers who follow the rules and should not be cheated out of trips. It also increases the impound fee for hustlers whose vehicles have been seized and streamlines prosecution efforts, so that hustlers can be held accountable much faster. The new effort is exactly what I mean when I talk about prioritizing driver and passenger dignity, and a transportation system that works together. Change begins by identifying a real problem, coordinating across agencies, and delivering a practical solution that protects the public and supports working drivers.

We’ll be revisiting our survey biannually to gauge whether drivers are seeing an impact in areas of concern, and you will continue to see me and TLC staff in your communities to listen, learn, and provide updates. Visiting with drivers – who are some of New York City’s greatest ambassadors – is the best part of this job, and with a strong feedback loop, we will move the industry forward together. Thank you for serving our city.

Midori Valdivia
Commissioner and Chair
Taxi and Limousine Commission

Latest stories driving NYC's taxi and FHV market via AutoMarketwire:

• ‘I didn’t know where my son was.’ 11-year-old boy with autism takes Uber to JFK Airport without parents knowing (News 12 Long Island)

• Robotaxis Are Here. So Why Aren’t They Taking Over? (Bloomberg)

• NYC’s Rideshare Law Raises First Amendment Problems (Law.com, New York Law Journal)

• Uber Enacts Stricter Background Checks for Drivers (The New York Times)

Subscribe now

AutoMarketplace is the largest newsletter and podcast covering NYC’s $16 billion for-hire transportation market — tracking commercial insurance, TLC plates, taxi medallions, and trips. Proprietary indexes: AIX, APX, AYX.

AutoMarketplace.com | YouTube | Advertise

The Taxi Improvement Fund (TIF) was created by the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) in 2014 to give drivers and fleets a financial incentive to make yellow and green cabs accessible. It grew out of a federal court settlement requiring half the taxi fleet to become wheelchair accessible (WAV), a mandate the courts have since reaffirmed and sharpened after the TLC missed its early deadlines: 50% of the active taxi fleet by March 2025, a mark since cleared, and 50% of all 13,587 authorized medallions by the end of 2028.

Financed by a passenger surcharge on every taxicab trip, originally 30 cents and raised to $1 in December 2022, the fund pays medallion owners, who may be individual owner-drivers or fleets, an initial hack-up grant and ongoing operational payments to convert their cabs into WAVs and, until recently, paid the drivers behind the wheel a $1 per-trip bonus for completed accessible trips.

TIF Was Heading Toward Insolvency

Because its entire revenue base is a per-trip surcharge, TIF lives and dies by yellow cab trip volume, and that dependency became its central vulnerability. When yellow cab ridership collapsed during the pandemic and clawed back only to roughly half of pre-pandemic levels, TIF's revenue fell with it: collections dropped from about $29.1 million in 2019 to a $10.7 million trough in 2021. The December 2022 tripling of the surcharge, from 30 cents to $1, cushioned that loss by extracting more from each remaining trip, but it could not manufacture trips that were not being taken, and it made every taxi ride more expensive in the process.

Article continues after advertisement

When a federal court reaffirmed the 50% accessibility mandate, the squeeze became structural. The fund now had to finance far more $14,000 one-time WAV hack-up payments, the associated $1,000 quarterly operational payments per taxi, and more $1 per-trip payments to a growing number of drivers operating accessible cabs. On the revenue side, the tripled surcharge was doing some heavy lifting, but with fewer trips to multiply against, collections could only grow so fast, far slower than a fully recovered fleet would have allowed. On the cost side, weak driver earnings, whether from lingering medallion debt or competition from an arguably oversupplied TLC-plated FHV fleet, made it harder for owners and owner-drivers to afford, even with TIF subsidy, the hack-up the mandate required, especially for a popular WAV like the $85,000-plus converted Toyota Sienna. Payouts were set to climb faster than a volume-starved surcharge could keep up with.

By January 2025, the TLC projected the fund would go insolvent, with an agency presentation showing the balance sliding from a positive $15 million at the end of 2024 to negative $6 million a year later, and deteriorating every year after that to negative $105 million by 2029 if nothing changed.

So the TLC, under then-Chair David Do, acted. At its March 2025 vote, the Commission adopted several changes including:

• Eliminated the $1-per-trip driver payment, replacing it with a $10 bonus for each trip a driver completes that was initiated through a call center run by an approved E-hail Provider.

• Cut medallion owner operational payments from $1,000 to $625 per quarter, capping the lifetime total at $10,000 over four years (down from $16,000 over four years to $28,000 over seven).

• Raised the hack-up grant, which had not been adjusted since 2014, from $14,000 to $20,000, funded largely by the operational-payment cut above.

• Capped the total available TIF grant per WAV hack-up at $30,000, down from a maximum of $42,000 under the old structure.

• Shut down its own Accessible Dispatch program, operated by MTM, for roughly $6 million in annual savings redirected into TIF. In its own words, the TLC said the move would keep the dispatch money inside the fund: the savings “will be reallocated to fund the TIF hack-up payments that assist medallion owners in the purchase and hack-up of Accessible Vehicles.”

The 2025 TIF Report

The TLC's latest annual TIF report shows real progress, but the headline figures need context, because the Commission's mid-year changes mean 2025 was a transition year that still carried the full cost of programs that are now eliminated. Counting the green cab fund (SHLIF) alongside TIF, the funds collected $46.8 million in 2025 and distributed $53.2 million, spending roughly $6.4 million more than they took in.

On its face, that looks alarming. A $6.4 million shortfall against the TLC’s reported balance leaves the fund thin, and on a straight-line reading the cushion is nearly gone. But the shortfall is an artifact of timing. 2025’s distributions still carried $5.3 million in Accessible Dispatch costs, a program whose last day of service was February 28, 2026, and $4.0 million in driver payments, nearly all of it legacy $1-per-trip money paid before the bonus stopped on April 25, 2025. Together those two now-ended programs ran $9.3 million, about 17.5% of total distributions, and neither recurs at that scale. Normalize for their removal and 2026 distributions land in the low-$40-million range, at or just above breakeven against the surcharge collections, which is exactly the self-sustaining footing the rescue was designed to reach.

The recovery shows up first in collections. TIF alone brought in $46.2 million in 2025, up about $7.4 million over 2024, which was driven by rising yellow cab trip volume. Owner payments, meanwhile, hit a record $43.8 million. That surge was mechanical: every medallion pulled from storage or re-hacked now returns as a WAV, and roughly 1,000 medallions came out of storage in 2025, led in large part by Marblegate’s expanding Signal Taxi fleet, which likely added more WAVs than any other medallion fleet. At the $20,000 hack-up grant plus operational payments, those activations likely drove well over $20 million of 2025’s TIF payouts on their own, which is why owner distributions spiked.

The two cut programs are now behind the fund. The driver figure was inflated by timing, peaking at $14.0 million back in 2019 and front-loaded into early 2025 before the cutoff, so it overstates the recurring cost. Accessible Dispatch goes next: after February 2026, accessible phone requests shifted to e-hail providers, keeping the more than $5 million the TLC spent on that contract inside the fund.

TIF Is Solvent, But the Trip Math Is the Catch

By the TLC’s own scorecard, the rescue succeeded: the agency met its January objectives, no surcharge increase, no city funding, a higher hack-up grant, and WAV levels above 50%, and the 2025 report calls the fund self-sustaining at the current $1 surcharge. But that verdict rests on a hidden assumption: that 2025’s rising taxi trip trajectory continues. It is not. Breakeven penciled out only on 2025’s volume, and 2026 has reversed it, with yellow cab trips down 7.0% in April, the sector’s third straight monthly decline. The cuts to driver payments and Accessible Dispatch did real work, but the fund was ultimately rescued by rising trips, and it is already being re-stressed by falling ones.

Look past the transition year and the recurring bill is actually manageable. The one-time hack-up backlog is nearly cleared, roughly 306 stored medallions remain for the 2028 court ordered WAV mandate, about $6.1 million more. After that, the standing cost settles into two parts. At the mandated 50% WAV level across all 13,587 medallions, operational payments run about $17 million a year ($2,500 per WAV medallion), and that is likely a ceiling, since a medallion must complete 750 trips a quarter to qualify. On top of that, accessibility has to be maintained: with the roughly 6,800-vehicle WAV fleet cycling on a multi-year replacement schedule and used WAVs now permitted, the fund should expect on the order of 1,000 re-hacks annually, about $20 million more in fresh grants. Taken together, a fully matured TIF runs close to $37 million a year, comfortably below the $46.2 million it collected in 2025.

That is the good news and the trap at once. At 2025 trip levels, the mature fund covers its mandate and throws off roughly $9 million in headroom, real money that could fund a return of driver pay. But that headroom is not a structural surplus; it is a function of volume, and volume is falling. 2026’s 7.0% decline pulls collections back toward the mature cost line, and a sustained downturn erases the cushion entirely. The surcharge cannot save it, the rate already tripled to $1 in 2022 and cannot be raised again without making every ride more expensive. With the rate fixed, the fund’s ability to do more for drivers rests entirely on trips, and the question is no longer whether TIF can cover accessibility, but whether it can grow enough to give drivers back what they lost.

The TLC capped new FHV plates, and with the roughly 10,000 FHV plates released in 2023 now stabilizing, a tighter for-hire supply meeting recovering demand should be channeling trips to the constrained medallion fleet, especially now that yellow cabs take e-hails. That is what a cap is built to do. In our view, the reason it is not working is the Green Rides redirect: because the apps earn no credit for dispatching to yellow cabs, Uber and Lyft are siphoning off the very demand the cap was meant to send to taxis. One TLC rule is quietly defeating another, and TIF, trip-funded, pays the price.

The AutoMarketplace Proposal

So the path back to paying drivers runs through trips, not the surcharge dial. At the March 2026 hearing on Chair nominee Midori Valdivia, NYTWA WAV driver Wain Chin called for reinstating the $1-per-trip bonus that once offset the cost of an accessible vehicle, which can now approach $100,000 for a new WAV-ready Toyota Sienna, including New York’s 8.875% sales tax. A flat reinstatement today would re-arm the exact risk that nearly sank the fund: the TLC projected that keeping the $1 would have pushed driver payments to $26 million a year, a sum that would have swallowed most of the fund’s revenue, scaling with the very volume now falling. The answer is not to abandon the driver payment, but to earn it back, and that takes three moves.

First, fix the demand leak. The TLC should revise the Green Rides targets and credit Uber and Lyft for dispatches to the WAV yellow cab fleet, already 59.3% accessible, so the apps stop redirecting trips away from the medallions whose surcharge funds the entire program. Second, tighten the plate cap. The WAV exemption is now the only channel for new TLC plates, and it should be capped so the exemption cannot quietly become a new oversupply valve; a genuine hard cap pushes demand back toward the 2,652 medallions still sitting in storage, reactivating dormant yellow cab capacity instead of minting new FHVs.

Third, give drivers a share now, not just someday. Because one-off transition costs are abnormally high during the storage-activation wave, the fund’s near-term cushion is real but thin, so a full $1 reinstatement is premature. Instead, the TLC should sweep any year-end TIF balance above a $10 million reserve floor, distributing it pro-rata to WAV yellow cab drivers scaled to their completed trips. It pays drivers when the fund can afford it and pays nothing when it cannot, the opposite of the old per-trip bonus that drained the fund most when volume sagged. Then, once all 13,587 medallions are active and the one-time transition hack-up bill is behind the fund, the recurring math clears, and the full $1 bonus can be restored for good.

We commend the prior TLC Chair David Do for a politically costly rescue when collapse was months of inaction away. Finishing the job now belongs to Chair Midori Valdivia, and it runs through taxi trips. The fund has been pulled back from insolvency. The real question is whether the TLC will grow yellow cab ridership, and protect the cap, that lets it pay taxi drivers what the work is worth.

Stories driving NYC's taxi and FHV market via AutoMarketwire:

• Put a Price on Street Parking, Generate Billions (Vital City)

• New York City has defeated Waymo, and the taxi lobby is the reason (TNW)

• Waymo Has Been Defeated by New York City (Futurism)

• New York City’s Skies Are Going to Get Weird (Curbed)

• Uber Advertising expands beyond owned apps in play for more ad dollars (Marketing Dive)

• American Transit CEO: “If We Came Out of This Market, Uber Would Be in Trouble” (AutoMarketplace)

• Why Waymo’s Driverless Taxis Won’t Be on Your Streets Anytime Soon (The New York Times)

• Cab driver attacked outside MSG during violent Knicks celebrations speaks out (ABC7 New York)

Subscribe now

AutoMarketplace is the largest newsletter and podcast covering NYC’s $16 billion for-hire transportation market — tracking commercial insurance, TLC plates, taxi medallions, and trips. Proprietary indexes: AIX, APX, AYX.

AutoMarketplace.com | YouTube | Advertise

This is Dawood, founder of AutoMarketplace. Before today’s story, I want to take a moment to introduce something new.

Starting today, AutoMarketplace is launching AutoMarketplace Market Wire, a curated news feed available on our website, automarketplace.com. Market Wire surfaces the most relevant articles from local and national outlets covering the NYC taxi and for-hire vehicle (FHV) industry, so you don’t have to hunt for them yourself.

This is not a temporary measure while we continue to build out our content platform and newsroom. Curation is a permanent and valued part of what AutoMarketplace does. Our goal is to be the leading intelligence platform for New York City's taxi and FHV ecosystem. By our estimate it is a roughly $16 billion market, combining medallion, plate, and vehicle assets with the annual spending streams that move through it: more than $8 billion in fares, plus the commercial insurance premiums, financing, and vehicle maintenance and repair that keep TLC drivers and fleets on the road.

Being that platform means original reporting, data, and analysis alongside a sharp eye on everything worth reading across the broader landscape. If it matters to this industry, we want to help you find it efficiently.

Market Wire also gives you access to the full AutoMarketplace archive, where you can text search more than 800 articles, NYC TLC press releases, and our growing aggregation of the best reporting on the industry. Everything in one place.

From time to time we will highlight Market Wire stories directly in the newsletter and add our own commentary. Today is one of those times.

AutoMarketplace Market Wire is live now on automarketplace.com.

Article continues after advertisement

American Transit CEO: “If We Came Out of This Market, Uber Would Be in Trouble”

American Transit's blockchain plan reached the national press this month. The initiative first appeared in ATIC's 2025 Management Discussion and Analysis, which CEO Ralph Bisceglia sent to the Department of Financial Services (DFS), New York's insurance regulator, on April 1st and which we covered recently in Part 2 of our ongoing TLC insurance series, after pulling the filing from the public record.

A more consumer-facing version surfaced on June 2nd, when Bisceglia appeared as a special guest of The Publius National Post, in a piece published by A.J. Rice headlined “Is the Transportation System in Mamdani’s New York A Disaster?” Six days later, on June 8th, public policy analyst and Stockton University finance professor Dr. Michael Busler covered the same plan in a Newsmax opinion column titled “American Transit’s Plan to Revitalize NYC.”

Both pieces describe ATIC as proposing to use blockchain technology to address structural problems in the TLC insurance market, and both quote Bisceglia on wanting to “create a system that actually helps drivers instead of trapping them.”

The Newsmax column adds further quotes, including Bisceglia’s blunt framing of the company’s importance. “If we came out of this market, Uber would be in trouble,” he warned. “Transportation in New York City could be grounded.”

The plan centers on what Dr. Busler’s Newsmax column and American Transit describe as a blockchain-based “Integrated Risk Management Services” platform, which would build tamper-proof claims records shared across drivers, medical providers, and arbitrators. One proposal would replace the traditional Assignment of Benefits (AOB) agreement, which lets a medical provider bill an insurer directly after an accident, with a blockchain “smart contract.” ATIC argues the current AOB process invites drawn-out legal and billing fights, and says verified, time-stamped digital records would cut down on them. The company also says the same platform could help drivers build financial profiles that open access to loans, vehicle leases, and other products. ATIC’s roadmap even floats tokenizing TLC permits as digital assets.

For readers who want the fuller picture, our recent series installments are useful references for contextualizing Mr. Bisceglia’s comments: Part 1, “American Transit’s Financial Hole Widens to Nearly $1 Billion” (May 27), and Part 2, “American Transit CEO Bisceglia Makes His Case to DFS, ATIC Posts Q1 Profit” (June 9). Part 2, in particular, references the same Excelsior blockchain initiative as ATIC described it to the DFS, including the recent addition to American Transit’s board of Manny Alicandro, an attorney who has advised clients on blockchain and cryptocurrency matters.

Read the Newsmax column. Read the original Publius National Post piece.

Subscribe now

AutoMarketplace is the largest newsletter and podcast covering NYC’s $16 billion for-hire transportation market — tracking commercial insurance, TLC plates, taxi medallions, and trips. Proprietary indexes: AIX, APX, AYX.

AutoMarketplace.com | YouTube | Advertise

On June 12th, the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission published the initial results of what it calls a “first-of-its-kind driver survey” designed to gather direct input from licensees and guide agency priorities under the Mamdani administration. The survey launched April 20th at JFK’s taxi and for-hire vehicle (”rideshare”) lots, where newly appointed Chair and Commissioner Midori Valdivia introduced it to drivers in person.

The presentation frames TLC’s current agenda in its own words:

In this new era for TLC, our work is guided by three key priorities:

Driver and Passenger Dignity, Corporate Accountability, and a Transportation System that Works Together.

These priorities shape how we support the drivers who keep our city moving, protect the passengers who rely on TLC-licensed services, and work with our partners to build a safer, fairer, and more responsive transportation system.

— NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission, Initial Results from TLC Driver Feedback Survey, June 12, 2026

Driver Survey Summary

984KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

This is a noble start, and TLC deserves credit for it. The agency went to the JFK lots, put the questionnaire in multiple languages, and collected nearly 4,000 responses, about 1,400 of them, or 36 percent, in a language other than English. Proactive, in-person outreach to drivers is exactly the kind of engagement the industry needs. The results are worth taking seriously. They are also worth contextualizing. TLC says it will run the survey periodically and keep the questionnaire online for rolling feedback, which is the right commitment.

Article continues after advertisement

Important Context

Nearly 4,000 responses is a real number, and TLC earned it. Measured against the field it samples, though, it is a starting point rather than a cross-section. New York has roughly 179,000 licensed TLC drivers, an estimated 111,800 of them active. Against that range, 3,930 responses amount to somewhere between 2.2 and 3.5 percent of drivers.

When those responses arrived matters as much as how many. More than 1,100, or roughly a quarter of those surveyed, came in on April 20th, the launch day itself. Participation that clusters around an outreach event tells you who the agency reached in its opening push, not yet how the wider field feels.

The base then thins as the questions go on. The “nearly 4,000” headline belongs to the first two questions, at 3,930 responses. From there it steps down: 3,545 through the agree-or-disagree portion, 3,248 on the next set of questions, and 2,986 by the demographics at the end. That is a 24 percent fall from first question to last, and it lands on the findings TLC leans on hardest. The open-text question (Question #12) does not disclose a response count.

None of this diminishes the effort. It means the results should be read as directional rather than definitive, which is exactly why TLC’s plan to repeat the survey is the right one.

Headlines vs. Numbers

A significant portion of survey responses were collected through direct, in-person engagement with TLC staff during the April 20th launch event. That collection method matters. Drivers completing a survey handed to them at the lot by agency employees may respond differently than drivers filling it out anonymously weeks later, particularly on agency-related questions, which also appear early in the survey when goodwill from the interaction is freshest. Read straight through, the presentation can leave the impression that TLC is broadly well-regarded and that the industry’s real problems sit with Uber, Lyft, rental fleets, and other private-sector participants.

A closer look at the numbers complicates that reading. On questions about TLC’s own conduct (rules, fairness, fines) drivers split nearly down the middle, with substantial portions expressing dissatisfaction alongside those expressing support. The presentation’s slide titles frequently lean toward the more favorable interpretation, but the distributions tell a more balanced story.

Consider Question #9, which asks drivers to identify their single greatest frustration over the past year. Every category on the list traces back to TLC or city government: new rules and requirements (26.8%), competition with illegal operators (28%), fines and penalties (26%), licensing and renewals (13.2%), and inspections (6.1%). Even competition with illegal operators falls within TLC’s enforcement mandate, and the agency has been acting on it. While drivers are split on which specific frustration ranks first, the source of all of them is the regulatory environment the agency administers.

The presentation also blurs the line between driver sentiment and verifiable fact. One featured response states that Uber and Lyft take more than 60 percent of the passenger’s fare. Unlike opinions about fairness or satisfaction, that claim can be tested against trip-level data TLC already collects. It is also unclear whether respondents making such statements are including government-imposed charges in their calculation of platform take rates: New York State sales tax, the Black Car Fund assessment, congestion pricing, and MTA surcharges all sit on top of the app’s actual commission. Noticeably absent from the survey are any questions about TLC fees or government-related surcharges themselves.

The TLC is presenting qualitative feedback, not endorsing these statements as factual. But featuring claims that could be objectively measured, without flagging the distinction, risks leaving readers with the impression that the claims have been validated. A clearer line between driver perceptions and measurable facts would strengthen the presentation’s credibility.

Earnings & Expenses

The open-text answers to Question #12, “What should TLC focus on in the coming year,” are where the survey stops being mixed. TLC grouped responses into three themes: driver earnings and income, driver expenses, and TLC plate and license availability. Each is worth reading on its own. They are worth more read together.

Driver Earnings and Income. Respondents described a squeeze on what they take home. One wrote that Uber and Lyft often take more than 60 percent of the passenger's fare, and that weekly gross commission calculations leave drivers underpaid on individual rides. As noted above, it is unclear whether that figure includes government-imposed charges such as sales tax, the Black Car Fund assessment, and MTA surcharges, which would overstate the platform's actual commission. Another asked TLC to ensure drivers can earn a decent income with their dignity intact.

Driver Expenses. The cost side surfaced just as clearly. One driver reported that commercial for-hire liability insurance has more than doubled since 2018 and that mechanic labor rates have climbed 33 percent in two years. Another described yellow taxi rents near $5,000 a month pushing drivers to the apps, only to find TLC-plated car rentals running around $3,000 a month. A third put it bluntly: earnings are not realistic given the expenses required to drive, and drivers have to work more than 72 hours a week to make ends meet.

TLC Plate and License Availability. Respondents also raised the cost of renting vehicles with TLC plates, describing it as a significant drag on earnings and a source of financial stress. Others asked TLC to stop issuing new licenses entirely, arguing there are already too many drivers and that Uber and Lyft should be prevented from hiring more drivers.

These three themes are not parallel complaints. They are links in the same chain. Commercial insurance and repair labor are primary inputs to what it costs to put a vehicle on the road, and those input costs are what set rental pricing for TLC-plated vehicles. For drivers who rent, this is the expense they feel most directly. For drivers who own, it hits through their insurance bill and repair invoices. Either way, the causation runs one direction: insurance and repair costs drive what it costs to operate a vehicle, whether that cost shows up as a rental rate or an ownership expense. That cost structure does not work in reverse, and what remains after it is what a driver actually takes home.

The respondents calling for a cap on new licenses or plates are making a version of the same argument from the supply side: fewer drivers competing for the same trip volume should structurally mean more earnings per driver, and more margin to absorb the rising costs described above.

All three themes point back to the same reality: driver net earnings are being squeezed from every direction.

The driver who reported that commercial coverage has more than doubled since 2018 is directionally consistent with what AutoMarketplace has tracked through the AutoMarketplace Insurance Index (AIX), though likely on the higher side of the market average. AIX data shows individual FHV liability premiums up roughly 39% since 2018 (4.2% CAGR), with FHV fleet premiums up approximately 65% over the same period (6.4% CAGR). A driver experiencing increases beyond those averages may be reflecting individual underwriting factors: accident history, violation points, or unfavorable loss runs.

The direction of the complaint, however, is not in dispute. Since 2023, AIX estimates that individual FHV liability premiums have risen approximately 31% (9.3% CAGR), while FHV fleet premiums have climbed roughly 34% (10.2% CAGR). Cumulative minimum driver pay increases have totaled 18.3% over the last four years. For example, last year TLC liability premiums materially outpaced the 3.4% annual rate adjustment delivered by TLC’s CPI-W-based minimum pay rate formula.

The survey now hands TLC a first-party record of what drivers are experiencing on the expense side, and it points to the same conclusion the data does: insurance sits at the head of the cost chain, and the minimum driver pay formula is not keeping up.

Our Hope

The driver survey is a good first move by Commissioner Valdivia. The natural next step is to extend the same listening posture to the rest of the ecosystem. Drivers do not operate in isolation. Their costs are shaped by insurers, rental fleets, bases, and brokers. Question #8 shows that 42.1% of drivers disagree they are treated fairly by these businesses, with "strongly disagree" the single largest response at 27.4%. Question #11 shows that 24.7% of drivers believe defending them from private businesses like app companies, bases, or fleets would be the single most beneficial TLC action.

A driver survey captures one side of a market. A holistic and balanced view requires hearing from the other participants too, so that when TLC acts on earnings and expenses, it is acting on an understanding of how the whole cost structure fits together. For example, increasing rental costs are inherently driven by increasing insurance rates. As we recently wrote, the more than $750 million insolvency of American Transit, the largest TLC-focused insurance company, is not only a regulatory failure but something that needs to be contextualized before scapegoating actors (e.g., rental companies) who are themselves subject to the same failures and cost pressures as drivers.

We hope the TLC will survey those stakeholders with the same energy it brought to JFK on April 20th.

Subscribe now

AutoMarketplace reports on, operates, and invests in New York City’s for-hire transportation (TLC) industry and the wider automotive mobility landscape.

AutoMarketplace.com is a market intelligence and fleet management platform for New York City’s for-hire vehicle ecosystem—delivering proprietary indexes (AYX, APX, AIX), real-time analytics, and fleet services across taxi medallions, TLC plates, and commercial insurance.

Check out AutoMarketplace on YouTube. Interested in advertising with us? Click here.