Ride-hailing apps have shattered those boundaries by signing up drivers with livery or black-car licenses. These companies cast themselves as filling big gaps in the transportation system, and it’s true that they have been great for people in mass-transit-starved parts of the city. But their growth has also led to many veteran taxi and black-car drivers seeing a devastating decrease in take-home pay. That’s largely because they are completing fewer trips than before. As a result, the value of the taxi medallions that drivers must either buy from the city or rent from taxi companies has crashed in recent years, going from a high of about $1.3 million in 2014 to less than $200,000 today. Over the past five months, four drivers who were financially strained have killed themselves, and many others have lost their medallions to foreclosure.

At the same time, traffic has slowed to a crawl, to just 8.2 miles per hour south of 60th Street in Manhattan in 2015, down from 9.4 miles per hour in 2010, according to the city’s Department of Transportation.

It makes little sense for the city to regulate the old and new guard of for-hire cars differently when many New Yorkers use them interchangeably — as do some drivers, who have been known to switch between traditional cabs and app-based services. While it would be impractical for the city to get rid of its existing regulations in one fell swoop, it could phase in new regulations. A more thoughtful regime would ensure that all drivers make a living wage by establishing a minimum fare for riders, and a standardized share of that fare for drivers, regardless of what kind of car they drive. Or as Brad Lander, a City Council member from Brooklyn, has proposed, the city could require companies like Uber to pay drivers a minimum wage. Further, the city ought to standardize regulations like those requiring that a certain number of cars be accessible to people with disabilities.

The city and state also need to create a smart congestion pricing plan to reduce traffic while raising money for upgrades to the subway and bus system, which would encourage fewer people to get into cabs and Ubers. The Legislature recently added a surcharge on taxi trips below 96th Street in Manhattan: 75 cents for pooled trips, $2.50 for yellow taxis and $2.75 for black cars and Uber and Lyft rides. This charge is flawed. It does not vary by the time of day, and lawmakers failed to impose fees on private cars and trucks. A smart pricing scheme would discourage use of all vehicles when traffic is at its worst and encourage car travel and deliveries at off-peak times.

Over time, the city should consider whether it owes something to drivers who sunk their savings into taxi medallions. Many drivers went into debt to buy these permits because the city promised them a monopoly on picking up passengers, a promise it has not been able to keep. No doubt any compensation plan would be controversial, and working out the details would be tricky — the city, for example, should not compensate investors, like Michael Cohen, President Trump’s lawyer-cum-fixer, who should have known that they were taking big risks by buying up dozens of medallions. Governments in Quebec and Australia have compensated or are proposing compensating taxi drivers for the lost value of such licenses.