New York City votes to cap Uber, Lyft, and other ride-hailing services

The New York City Council on Wednesday passed a package of bills that caps the number of Uber, Lyft, and other ride-hail vehicles on the road for one year.

The Taxi and Limousine Commission will spend the next 12 months studying the effects of ride-hail services in New York. The City Council also voted to set a minimum wage for these drivers.

People who want to rein in Uber and Lyft say their drivers are taking over the streets, making traffic even worse. Supporters of the companies say they help neighborhoods outside of Manhattan, where it's harder to find a taxi. In a statement, Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city is "directly confronting a crisis that is driving working New Yorkers into poverty and our streets into gridlock. The unchecked growth of app-based for-hire vehicle companies has demanded action — and now we have it."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Continue reading for free

We hope you're enjoying The Week's refreshingly open-minded journalism.

Subscribed to The Week? Register your account with the same email as your subscription.

Catherine Garcia

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.