11/19/2025
"The AV debate highlights these tensions even more clearly. Taxi medallion owners, focused on preserving the long-term value of their operating rights, are increasingly pushing for policies that would reduce the value of FHV licenses. That would directly harm the more than 80,000 drivers who work on the Uber and Lyft platforms, as well as the fleets that support them.
This raises a basic question: Are medallion owners prepared to displace tens of thousands of working-class drivers in order to capture the full upside of AV deployment? Don’t those drivers, who outnumber medallion owner-operators by a wide margin, deserve a “dignified” retirement or transition?
If the industry divides into medallion interests on one side and FHV interests on the other, the only beneficiaries will be companies like Google-backed Waymo, Tesla, and Amazon-backed Zoox. These firms have enormous amounts of capital, political reach, and technological advantages. They will move quickly into any regulatory vacuum New York City, and local stakeholders, create.
Fragmentation does not strengthen workers. It allows outside companies to define the future of urban mobility.
New York now faces a significant choice. The City can develop a coordinated regulatory framework that protects workers, modernizes insurance, clarifies AV operating rights, and treats honest operators fairly. Or it can continue reacting to crises as they appear until outside actors set the terms for everyone.
The panel made one point clear: Technology alone will not determine the future of work."
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