I find it really frustrating that the NYC DOT fought their original business model in order to protect Lyft’s monopoly. I had assumed that Lyft’s monopoly was on the right to use DOT’s street space for their program (which at least makes sense), but it feels like a bike rental service operating on private property should not be the DOT’s jurisdiction.

The argument was essentially “we need to give Lyft a monopoly because that’s the only way they would invest in the system”, but the fact that Joco had a structural disadvantage (no public space) and was still willing to enter the market is a sign that we could have a competitive market without giving it all away to Lyft.