The government opened applications this week for ride-hailing licences, the legal framework everyone's been asking for since Uber showed up here without one. Drivers and platforms can now actually apply to do this on the books. Meanwhile the roughly 18,000 taxi medallions sit exactly where they've always sat, held by owners who rent them out at prices that make driving a cab barely worth it, while the enforcement push against unlicensed ride-hail drivers that was promised is still mostly a press release.

So here's the funny bit. The government just built a legal lane for the cars everyone already uses, and did nothing about the licence system that pushed people into the illegal lane in the first place. A taxi medallion is basically a piece of paper worth more than the car it's attached to, and the people who own stacks of them are not the ones driving. If ride-hailing goes legit and taxis stay stuck with the same fixed 18,000 plates and the same rental math, you haven't fixed the market. You've just given the new guy a licence plate and left the old guy holding a very expensive parking ticket.