In less than 3 months, the non-taxi NYC for-hire vehicle fleet has grown 6%+ (25%+ annualized growth), with ~3,000 more EV TLC Plates set to become active. How many TLC Plates does NYC need?
I read the entire transcript from the court, the tlc attorney said that most applications are not from corporations but from individual people who want to be an owner operator, but the truth is that insurance is cheaper on an individual, this is only the reason why people file an application on an individual, look at Facebook, how many tesla for rent, more than regular cars. if all people who bought tesla work on its by itself there has no so many tesla for rent. this all looks like a corruption scheme, they sold ev cars to people from all over New York, which had been sitting at dealerships for several years, were not provided with chargers, in the summer they ask people to turn off their air conditioners because the city can’t cope with the load, how do they want to charge 75k ev cars, business has dropped for everyone , before, even when people rented cars, they still earned money, and the rental companies and drivers, and now neither one nor the other, everyone thought that I would take my car and earn the same amount as before, but they did not take into account that there are many such people, and the market sank, Uber also created a waiting list for drivers, insurance companies don't take new drivers, they also raised insurance prices, TLC hit this business hard with its decision, they say that before covid there were 120k cars, I remember that time, every the second car on the street had TLS license plates, now there will be about 110k of them, and the city will also be stuck in traffic jams.
people still bypass this waiting list by adding drivers to wav cars, and more drivers are added anyway, there is not as much work in New York as there are cars, when in the summer there were 96-97k cars, everyone had a job, but now people survive
Lot of great insights and thoughts! Thank you for sharing. Hopefully, it's clear to TLC that the EV exemption should be removed and that FHV supply must now must be more tightly controlled or, as you say, no one will make any money.
Why don’t they stop new driver applications instead of trying to stop new plates ? If there is only a certain amount drivers then there could only be that amount of TLC vehicles being operated. Wouldn’t that solve all the problems? How can you flood the city with TLC vehicles when there is only X amount of drivers ?
That way current individual driver can get their own vehicle instead of renting also can stop the NYTWA from complaining because you can’t add new drivers
"Where Toronto has pushed the envelope is it appears to have capped for-hire vehicle driver licenses for Uber/Lyft, something that the Independent Drivers Guild (IDG) and other driver advocates have been pushing for in NYC. We think this policy would not work in NYC, as there are currently over 172,000 TLC-licensed drivers (i.e., you really want to add 70,000+ more TLC-plated vehicles to the road? It would collapse the entire industry, cause massive congestion - we think that’s a fairly uncontroversial take).
How you could make it work on a go forward basis, is if you follow the London Black Cab industry’s example of making it more difficult to get a commercial for-hire driver’s license via a difficult examination. In London they effectively have a “one driver, one no-cost taxi medallion” rule, but only after a driver passes a very difficult test called “The Knowledge”, which takes years to prepare for (which can be viewed as the effective medallion cost, in a way).
There are well documented controversies to this regulatory approach, but it is an approach that London took, while NYC embraced a taxi medallion system to protect professional for-hire driver earnings during the Great Depression (i.e., many London Black Cab drivers are not immigrants, not from London and because they are not natively fluent in English, it is often thought they have a harder time passing The Knowledge). Furthermore, London, unlike New York, has different driver licensing standards for different FHV sectors (black cab = yellow taxi, minicab = NYC FHV). In NYC, a TLC-licensed driver can drive across all FHV sectors (yellow taxi, green cab, Uber, Black Car, Livery, Lux Limo, etc).
This is a much more complex topic than many people appreciate because every city has a different regulatory history and approach when they originally tried to solve for protecting for-hire vehicle driver earnings. For example, London’s Knowledge examination has existed since 1865! You can’t ignore NYC’s Taxi/FHV markets unique history and the practicality of embracing sensible, but historically divergent regulatory approaches (i.e., London never had the medallion system, so imagine pitching that now or trying to implement that)."
Basically, there are currently 70,000+ more individuals with TLC drivers licenses than TLC vehicles, right now. So, it's hard to practically implement this idea. Also, there can be other controversies around whether existing drivers, block new drivers from entering the industry and the potential politics around that (i.e., existing TLC drivers who will be incentivized to prevent new people from entering industry). Perhaps, one can create policy that says if an individual hasn't done X TLC trips in a year, then their TLC drivers license becomes inactive, to start reducing the number of active drivers. Then, after that, create a regulated drivers license cap with a quarterly waitlist to onboard X amount of new drivers based on trip demand metrics.
Hope that's helpful and let us know your thoughts!
There are gonna be many bankruptcies coming soon, my personal earning have declined 20%, if this keeps on I will have to jump ship.
😔 hopefully that won't happen, but keep us up to date!
I read the entire transcript from the court, the tlc attorney said that most applications are not from corporations but from individual people who want to be an owner operator, but the truth is that insurance is cheaper on an individual, this is only the reason why people file an application on an individual, look at Facebook, how many tesla for rent, more than regular cars. if all people who bought tesla work on its by itself there has no so many tesla for rent. this all looks like a corruption scheme, they sold ev cars to people from all over New York, which had been sitting at dealerships for several years, were not provided with chargers, in the summer they ask people to turn off their air conditioners because the city can’t cope with the load, how do they want to charge 75k ev cars, business has dropped for everyone , before, even when people rented cars, they still earned money, and the rental companies and drivers, and now neither one nor the other, everyone thought that I would take my car and earn the same amount as before, but they did not take into account that there are many such people, and the market sank, Uber also created a waiting list for drivers, insurance companies don't take new drivers, they also raised insurance prices, TLC hit this business hard with its decision, they say that before covid there were 120k cars, I remember that time, every the second car on the street had TLS license plates, now there will be about 110k of them, and the city will also be stuck in traffic jams.
people still bypass this waiting list by adding drivers to wav cars, and more drivers are added anyway, there is not as much work in New York as there are cars, when in the summer there were 96-97k cars, everyone had a job, but now people survive
Lot of great insights and thoughts! Thank you for sharing. Hopefully, it's clear to TLC that the EV exemption should be removed and that FHV supply must now must be more tightly controlled or, as you say, no one will make any money.
Why don’t they stop new driver applications instead of trying to stop new plates ? If there is only a certain amount drivers then there could only be that amount of TLC vehicles being operated. Wouldn’t that solve all the problems? How can you flood the city with TLC vehicles when there is only X amount of drivers ?
That way current individual driver can get their own vehicle instead of renting also can stop the NYTWA from complaining because you can’t add new drivers
This is a great question. This is how we answered it in one of our articles recently (https://automarketplace.substack.com/p/toronto-caps-uber-and-lyft-driver).
"Where Toronto has pushed the envelope is it appears to have capped for-hire vehicle driver licenses for Uber/Lyft, something that the Independent Drivers Guild (IDG) and other driver advocates have been pushing for in NYC. We think this policy would not work in NYC, as there are currently over 172,000 TLC-licensed drivers (i.e., you really want to add 70,000+ more TLC-plated vehicles to the road? It would collapse the entire industry, cause massive congestion - we think that’s a fairly uncontroversial take).
How you could make it work on a go forward basis, is if you follow the London Black Cab industry’s example of making it more difficult to get a commercial for-hire driver’s license via a difficult examination. In London they effectively have a “one driver, one no-cost taxi medallion” rule, but only after a driver passes a very difficult test called “The Knowledge”, which takes years to prepare for (which can be viewed as the effective medallion cost, in a way).
There are well documented controversies to this regulatory approach, but it is an approach that London took, while NYC embraced a taxi medallion system to protect professional for-hire driver earnings during the Great Depression (i.e., many London Black Cab drivers are not immigrants, not from London and because they are not natively fluent in English, it is often thought they have a harder time passing The Knowledge). Furthermore, London, unlike New York, has different driver licensing standards for different FHV sectors (black cab = yellow taxi, minicab = NYC FHV). In NYC, a TLC-licensed driver can drive across all FHV sectors (yellow taxi, green cab, Uber, Black Car, Livery, Lux Limo, etc).
This is a much more complex topic than many people appreciate because every city has a different regulatory history and approach when they originally tried to solve for protecting for-hire vehicle driver earnings. For example, London’s Knowledge examination has existed since 1865! You can’t ignore NYC’s Taxi/FHV markets unique history and the practicality of embracing sensible, but historically divergent regulatory approaches (i.e., London never had the medallion system, so imagine pitching that now or trying to implement that)."
Basically, there are currently 70,000+ more individuals with TLC drivers licenses than TLC vehicles, right now. So, it's hard to practically implement this idea. Also, there can be other controversies around whether existing drivers, block new drivers from entering the industry and the potential politics around that (i.e., existing TLC drivers who will be incentivized to prevent new people from entering industry). Perhaps, one can create policy that says if an individual hasn't done X TLC trips in a year, then their TLC drivers license becomes inactive, to start reducing the number of active drivers. Then, after that, create a regulated drivers license cap with a quarterly waitlist to onboard X amount of new drivers based on trip demand metrics.
Hope that's helpful and let us know your thoughts!