To see why New York Mayor Bill de Blasio is correct to restrain Uber's growth for a year to figure out a more permanent fix, look to history. In the 1930s, the depressed economy put thousands of people behind the wheels of taxi cabs. Too many drivers chasing too few fares congested streets and drove down wages. In 1934, after a brutal strike, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia proposed limiting the number of cabs.
Three years later, LaGuardia signed into law the medallion system we have now. By requiring cabs to have a medallion, and limiting the number of those medallions, the city enacted an early form of what we, today, call congestion pricing.
Nearly eight decades later, Uber drivers are acting like cab drivers, but without the limits cab drivers face. It's no surprise that as tens of thousands of new cars and S.U.V.s join the ranks of for-hire vehicles annually, the streets have become more clogged.
Road congestion is not a sign of success. Some of New York's worst years were also its most congested, because people didn't trust the transit system.
Remember Travis Bickle?
So what are the long-term solutions to the Uber surge?
New York's public policy over the past three decades has been to minimize the cars and trucks on the city's streets, and to maximize the number of people using trains, buses, bicycles and their feet.
With all the attention to Uber, it's important to remember that three-quarters of commuters take mass transit, not a car, into Manhattan every day. After the mid-90s, subway ridership and pedestrian and bicycle traffic soared as car traffic fell.
We should keep it that way. The city and state need to invest in the subway and bus system to deal with record crowds. Investment doesn't only mean big new projects, but better evening and weekend service on commuter rails, subways and buses, especially in the outer boroughs.
This past weekend, it took my friends more than an hour to travel by subway from north Brooklyn to Midtown for dinner. No wonder people prefer Uber.
To pay for all this, the city and state can use the same technologies that Uber uses – but use them to enact a modern form of congestion pricing. Passengers coming into Manhattan or riding around Manhattan in a car or S.U.V. should pay to use the streets – enough to make wealthier New Yorkers and their employers think twice about paying up.
Passengers should pay a lot more, too, to ride around in a huge S.U.V. than in a small passenger car. Large vehicles take up more room, and cause more street damage.
And instead of capping cars, the city can keep capping the space those cars can use. New York can create more lanes for buses and bicyclists only, and more spots for goods deliveries only, too. Regulators can use camera technology to enforce such restrictions. Albany should allow far more cameras to police speed and red-light running, too.
New York's future depends on better transit and safer walking and bicycling conditions for everyone. As the world changes, the city is right to make sure that its rules keep up.
This piece originally appeared in New York Times Room for Debate