The black car takeover
In 2017 there were more yellow cab trips than Uber and Lyft combined. By 2023 it wasn't close. Seven years of NYC TLC data tells the story of the largest disruption in urban transportation since the car replaced the horse.
NYC's yellow medallion cab was once the most heavily regulated and most economically valuable taxi license in the world. Individual medallions sold for over $1 million before the crash. The industry was structured around scarcity — a fixed supply of medallions kept prices high and drivers employed.
Uber launched in NYC in 2011. Lyft followed in 2014. The TLC started separately tracking "High Volume For-Hire Vehicles" (FHVHV — the regulatory category that covers Uber, Lyft, and Via) in 2019, which is the first year we have apples-to-apples data. By then, the outcome was already legible.
Yellow cab trips, 2017–2023
total annual yellow cab trips · NYC TLC data
The 2020 COVID collapse is unmistakable. Yellow cab trips fell by roughly two-thirds in one year. But the structural story is visible even before that: year-over-year declines from 2017 through 2019, before the pandemic accelerated and locked in what was already a secular trend.
Uber + Lyft (FHVHV) trips, 2019–2023
total annual FHVHV trips (Uber, Lyft, Via) · NYC TLC data · tracking began 2019
By 2023, FHVHV handled significantly more the volume of yellow cabs. The recovery from COVID was faster for FHVHV than for yellow — the app-dispatched model had structural advantages in a world where fewer people wanted to flag down a car from the street.
Yellow cab seasonality: 2023 month by month
Even in decline, yellow cabs follow the city's rhythms. Summer quiets (people leave or walk). October and November spike (back to the office, early darkness). December lifts on holiday traffic, then collapses in January when tourists go home.
The medallion aftermath
The financial destruction was concentrated among owner-operators who bought medallions at peak prices, often with debt financing they believed was backed by a stable asset. When the medallion market collapsed, tens of thousands of drivers found themselves holding negative-equity assets they couldn't sell and couldn't afford to service.
NYC eventually created a debt relief program in 2021, capping outstanding medallion loan balances and providing city-backed buyouts for lenders. But the industry that emerged is structurally different: fewer owner-operators, more fleet-based drivers, a yellow cab market that serves a shrinking but resilient niche — airport runs, cash passengers, and people who just see a cab and hail it.
The FHVHV side has its own labor questions. The per-trip economics for Uber and Lyft
drivers in NYC are among the most studied in the country, partly because the TLC
publishes data that makes them legible. That's a different story — one the FHVHV
trip records can tell, particularly the driver_pay and base_passenger_fare columns.