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A few years ago, I tried to launch a service back in France similar to all these ride sharing companies that work with taxis rather than private drivers ( I guess the most comparable in the US market would be FlyWheel ). Things went downhill for us pretty quickly but I learned a lot about the taxi industry, how universally bad it is and why. In most countries you go, you'll notice that getting a cab is not a great experience. Small cities ( very roughly less than ~100k inhabitants ) have local companies. They're ran by local businesses that mostly depend on the quality of their service to survive. They also need to provide an ok job for their taxi drivers. This is why the service is usually more reliable and the quality of your rides is typically higher. Larger markets are much more interesting and suffer from monopoly, which often leads to what can be called mafia companies. The taxi industry is old. Very old. Small taxi companies grew from a few cabs to often controlling a third of the city they're operating in ( sometimes even more ). Laws restricted smaller guys to get into business over the past decades which we can probably put on lobbying. The lobbying part is always difficult to prove but simply looking at the stats talk by itself. Medallion are universally so expensive that taxis are forced to go through these companies that already control the market. This is a quote from wikipedia regarding NYC medallions : "Because of their high prices, medallions (and most cabs) are owned by investment companies and are leased to drivers (“hacks”)" : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_of_the_United_States#... . This is more representative of the US and a few european markets but it points out why many of these companies have been running without any competitors for half a century. Where it gets interesting is that many cities have just as many medallions today available for purchase as there were 50 years ago when the market was half the size. So why can we define these companies as Mafia ? Well it depends. Sometimes it is actual Mafia ( in South Africa you might feel safer in a township rather than in a taxicab, no joke. ). On more developed countries, these companies simply have control on our local governments. Las Vegas is the perfect example : taxi drivers are pissed because they're not getting paid crap and are even being taken a percentage of their tip ( either they get one or not ) based on their fare... When it comes down to introduce competitors ( Uber, Lyft, Sidecar etc... ), it usually is a lengthy battle since these companies refuse to match what the taxi companies pay our local governments. I could go on and on but every market has their own things going on and iterating over old legislation rather than keeping up with modernity put the taxi industry in a very bad place.

Anyway, sorry for the long answer. I currently work to one of the major ride sharing companies (I won't mention which one but this time I'm working with private drivers instead of actual taxis), and I'd love to share some of the stats we often have access to but it's obviously confidential...