HARI SREENIVASAN:

Despite the amount of money drivers make going down, the number of drivers themselves has gone up.

Since 2011, the number of for-hire vehicles licensed in New York City has more than doubled from 50,000 to about 130,000 cars. All required to be licensed by the city's Taxi and Limousine Commission. The majority of the new cars are used for app services like Uber and Lyft.

With that surge has come more congestion, making it harder to move through the city.

But are there enough riders for all those additional cars? An independent transportation study in 2017 found that more than a third of taxi and app vehicles in Manhattan's central business district were unoccupied during daytime hours.