The line graph illustrates the daily number of trips taken by people using traditional yellow cabs and two ride-sharing services, namely Uber and Lyft, in New York City between 2015 and 2018.
Overall, while hailing a ride on the street decreased in popularity markedly, the number of trips for Uber and Lyft increased exponentially, with the growth being particularly noticeable in the second half of the period. It is also clear that Uber overtook traditional taxi services to become the most popular way of getting around the city.
Yellow Taxi started out as the most common way of taking trips for New Yorkers, with upwards of 400,000 trips made daily. From the beginning of 2015 onward, the figure for this taxi service showed a fluctuating downward trend throughout the period, closing at above 300,000 trips a day in 2018.
The app-based ride-sharing services, however, showed the opposite trend. The start of the period saw around 60,000 Uber trips taken daily, which was lower than Yellow Taxis by a factor of seven, whereas Lyft entered the market in around March of 2015. The former rose sharply to hit a peak of almost 450,000 trips at the start of 2018, but it declined only to stage a recovery, still finishing above the other two services. The latter, meanwhile, started slowly, with the numbers increasing from the low thousands to about 50,000 trips at the turn of 2017. thereafter, the growth accelerated, with the figure more than doubling to hit its peak of 110,000 trips. However, the final months showed a slight decline.