Taxis and barely-legal app taxis both require a human to drive. Someone who's earning a living doing this, and paying taxes to NYC. Waymo is driven by a robot, owned by a company out in California, who has a lot of lawyers doing their best to avoid as much financial and legal liability as possible. Not that Uber and its ilk isn't doing the same thing but they've still got a tax-paying citizen in the loop.
The current mayor of NYC is a DemSoc so he might have some ideas about keeping NYC's money in the pockets of middle-class NYC citizens.
I don't think all of the economic benefit stays in NYC even when you take a yellow cab. A significant share of NYC taxi medallions are owned by entities based outside the city. Marblegate Capital in Connecticut owns about 2,146 medallions—nearly 16% of all NYC taxi medallions. They make more profit off the medallion financing business than actually operating the taxis which is basically break-even AFAIK.
Taxis and barely-legal app taxis both require a human to drive. Someone who's earning a living doing this, and paying taxes to NYC. Waymo is driven by a robot, owned by a company out in California, who has a lot of lawyers doing their best to avoid as much financial and legal liability as possible. Not that Uber and its ilk isn't doing the same thing but they've still got a tax-paying citizen in the loop.
The current mayor of NYC is a DemSoc so he might have some ideas about keeping NYC's money in the pockets of middle-class NYC citizens.
I don't think all of the economic benefit stays in NYC even when you take a yellow cab. A significant share of NYC taxi medallions are owned by entities based outside the city. Marblegate Capital in Connecticut owns about 2,146 medallions—nearly 16% of all NYC taxi medallions. They make more profit off the medallion financing business than actually operating the taxis which is basically break-even AFAIK.