Mayor Bill de Blasio on Friday said that if the city council had backed his cap on Uber and other ride-hail licenses three years ago, the lives of cab drivers might have been saved.
Hizzoner’s bid to push a cap on the licenses was rebuffed at the last minute by the council in 2015, after sustained pushback from the industry.
A new slate of council members passed a cap on new ride-hailing licenses in August.
But over the past year, at least eight taxi drivers have committed suicide — many of them citing financial hardships as the main reason.
“I wish that three years ago when a lot of us tried to put a cap on Uber and the other ride-sharing companies, if that had been achieved I would love to think that we might have been able to save some of these lives, that some of these horrible things wouldn’t have happened,” the mayor said on WNYC radio.
“And I wish the city council had acted then. They did act this year, and I want to give them credit for acting now.”
The one-year cap went into effect in August, giving city officials time to study at which level it makes sense to set a more permanent cap.
During the crisis of taxi driver suicides, Council Speaker Corey Johnson has said multiple times that he regrets not having backed the mayor’s legislative push in 2015.
On Friday, the mayor said the failure to impose a cap back then allowed the ride-sharing industry to flood the market, which he said “destroyed” the wages of workers across the industry and worsened congestion in Manhattan.
“The origin of this crisis is that new technology came into play … but the companies tried to evade any fairness and regulation,” de Blasio said. “I’m sick of the assumption that any company can do anything they want … You can’t just do whatever you want — there has to be rules.”