Stop the world, the City Council wants off.
The council’s Transportation Committee held a hearing Tuesday on bills to cap licenses for drivers for app-based services like Uber and Lyft until the city can “study” the new industry’s impact on traffic.
What the heck is a bunch of progressives doing trying to stop progress?
These services are booming because riders and drivers love them. Uber alone expects to hire another 10,000 drivers by year’s end — many drawn from yellow-cab fleets by better wages and hours than the old industry offers.
So: Shut ’em down? To justify the move, hacks like Taxi and Limousine Commission head Meera Joshi spout sheer nonsense, calling Uber and Lyft black-car options that offer “instant gratification” for the “privileged.”
Tell that to the folks in the outer boroughs and upper Manhattan — neighborhoods underserved for decades because so many yellow cabs won’t go there.
That created a black-car market (plus, more recently, the TLC’s green cabs). Uber & Co. are just the latest innovation — using the Web to take black cars to a new level of convenience and affordability.
The yellow-cab industry, with its monopoly on street hails, failed to adapt — and now it’s running to its political protectors.
That includes Mayor de Blasio, who raised nearly a half-million dollars from fleet owners. Two guesses why his TLC flunkies are begging the council to choke Uber.
After meeting months back with taxi-fleet owners, Transportation Committee Chairman Ydanis Rodriguez declared they might need a bailout. Now the council’s eyeing a cheaper (for city government, not city dwellers) way to protect the falling value of taxi medallions.
Freeze a booming industry while you do a “study”? Why not study (for real) first? If congestion is a problem, why not freeze bike lanes? Or “pedestrian plazas”? Or the mayor’s plan to close Central Park to traffic? All contribute to traffic congestion.
No: The council’s game is pure politics — robbing New Yorkers of a popular and growing new option to appease a special interest. It reeks.