One of New York City’s largest taxi fleet owners is asking for a bailout.

Evgeny Freidman, known as Gene, said in an interview Thursday that the taxi industry, like the financial industry, was too big to fail. He would like the city to guarantee taxi medallion loans, which would induce banks to extend more credit to fleet owners like him, and he compares this approach to the federal government’s actions to save large banks and insurers in 2008.

“I still see Bernanke saying, ‘I hate A.I.G.; I don’t want to give them any more money, but I have to,’ ” he said, referring to the former Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke and the large insurer that was bailed out in 2008.

Mr. Freidman’s problem is not unlike that of any homeowner who bought real estate in the early part of the century thinking prices could only go up. In New York, medallions, the license that is required to operate a yellow taxi, are fixed in number, and their price rose for decades because of increased demand and restricted supply.

Prices peaked in 2013, not just in New York but also in other large markets like Boston and Chicago. Prices have declined as taxis have faced competition from car service apps like Uber. At the top, the price for New York mini-fleet medallions, which may be owned by nondrivers, was over $1.2 million.