Lyft’s LA Taxi Partnership All But Confirms Next Stop: NYC Yellow Cabs
Today’s announcement that Lyft will begin dispatching licensed taxis in Los Angeles through Curb points to an imminent New York City launch — a move AutoMarketplace predicted in April
TL;DR
Lyft’s Curb partnership in Los Angeles all but confirms a New York City launch next — positioning Lyft to follow Uber’s successful taxi integration model.
Regulatory advantage: Yellow cabs are exempt from the TLC’s driver pay and utilization rate (UR) rules, giving Lyft an easy way to expand NYC driver (vehicle) supply and cut wait times.
Market impact: Thousands of additional daily rides will likely shift from TLC-plated FHVs to taxis, strengthening medallion earnings and values while tightening competition for non-taxi app drivers.
Lyft’s new partnership with Curb, announced earlier today, will connect Lyft riders directly with licensed taxi drivers in Los Angeles before expanding to other major U.S. cities where Curb operates.
Curb is the same platform Uber currently uses to dispatch tens of thousands of daily yellow cab trips in New York City. Similar to Uber’s integration with Curb, nothing will appear functionally different from the passenger’s perspective. For example, when a rider hails a vehicle on the Lyft app, instead of getting a TLC-plated for-hire vehicle, they’ll receive a yellow cab.
On the driver side, the existing Uber-Curb dispatching integration will also likely make it seamless for yellow cab medallion drivers to start receiving dispatches from Lyft. Essentially, it appears Lyft could go live in NYC with little more than a technical backend toggle.
“Both Lyft riders and drivers using Curb will continue to enjoy the seamless, familiar experience they expect, with the integration ensuring that nearly all app features remain consistent, even when taking a licensed taxi. The marketplaces are combined automatically in enabled markets, requiring no additional setup and keeping the ride experience aligned across platforms.” — Lyft press release (November 10, 2025)
This development follows Lyft’s pilot in St. Louis, which AutoMarketplace covered in an April 29th article, “Lyft’s Next Big Move: NYC Yellow Cabs.” That piece predicted exactly what seems to be now playing out.
From a regulatory and economic standpoint, the logic is clear. Yellow cabs are not subject to the TLC’s driver minimum pay or utilization rate (UR) rules, which have constrained Uber and Lyft’s ability to onboard additional FHV drivers that work with TLC-plated vehicles.
In addition, Lyft may be able to offer passengers lower fares while maintaining the same profit margin, thanks to the different surcharge and tax structure that applies when app companies dispatch trips to taxis—something we covered in a recent article.
By dispatching yellow cabs, Lyft gains instant access to thousands of TLC-licensed drivers without being bound by utilization standards. For the 80,000-plus non–yellow cab FHV drivers in NYC, however, this means greater competition for a shrinking pool of dispatches—the same trips they once received (from Uber and Lyft!) are now being shared with more than 10,000 additional drivers.
In summary, if Lyft and Curb begin dispatching rides to NYC yellow cabs, it could shift tens of thousands of daily trips away from drivers who work with TLC-plated for-hire vehicles to yellow cab drivers. That could strengthen earnings for medallion drivers, increase medallion valuations, and bring more medallions out of storage. In other words, as long as UberX or Lyft customers don’t mind getting a taxi instead of a black car—which they currently don’t seem to—then Lyft’s integration of yellow cabs marks a full-circle moment that, together with Uber’s recent taxi success, is poised to meaningfully reshape the city’s for-hire transportation landscape.
Disclaimer: The views expressed here are solely an opinion and should not be taken as financial or legal advice.
AutoMarketplace reports on New York City’s for-hire transportation (TLC) industry and the wider automotive mobility landscape.
AutoMarketplace.com is a data intelligence and market infrastructure platform for New York City’s for-hire vehicle ecosystem—delivering proprietary indexes (AYX, APX, AIX), real-time analytics, and marketing services across taxi medallions, TLC plates, and commercial insurance.
Check out AutoMarketplace on YouTube. Interested in advertising with us? Click here.
Many drivers are not gonna be happy. Uber drivers are already feeling the effects of their rides going to Yellow cabs.
Mamdani’s been active on twitter, posting some taxi related content. Dapping up taxi drivers in one of them 😂. Another vid he’s doing an interview and says how Bloomberg “inflated the value of the medallion driving it from 200k to $1M”… not the thing you want to hear when you want to inflate it again… but hopefully Mamdani can recognize it as a indefinitely lived public infrastructure asset to control traffic / apply it to AVs. Also a bit of hopium .. since “this time is different” in that hopefully the sellers are individuals/ companies holding it, selling it to big tech… I’m hopeful a big medallion holder is speaking in his ear about this.