City Council tries again to cap Uber

The City Council will once again explore capping the number of vehicles driving for Uber and similar app-based taxi services in New York City streets — beginning with a yearlong ban on issuing new licenses for most for-hire cars.

The move comes three years after a similar effort to limit the ride-hailing apps in the name of congestion. It was pushed by Mayor de Blasio, viewed skeptically in the Council and failed in the summer of 2015 in the face of aggressive push back from Uber.

But calls for restrictions on the companies have grown in recent months, as studies have borne out that the cars — often driving without passengers — have indeed increased congestion. Perhaps more stark has been the reckoning of the services' impact on the city's old-fashioned taxi and livery industry, and on drivers who spent their entire fortunes or mortgaged their homes to buy taxi medallions, only to see them plummet in price. Six struggling drivers have killed themselves this year.

Council Speaker Corey Johnson (D-Manhattan) said the Council's package of bills aimed to create fairness between the various kinds of taxis in the city, to support drivers who work for all those kinds of taxis, to combat congestion and increase accessibility for the disabled.