It is a useful case study in regulation used anti-competitively, and the misaligned interests between consumers (those wanting cheap convenient transport) and the incumbent services backed by municipalities (those wanting monopoly rents and the tax income from it). These arguments hold parallels to many infrastructure and service provider debates we see today (heck we even come across the term common carrier in the article).
There were, of course, valid objections at the time, and there are today. Many of the same ones are repeated in the article.
The most interesting part to me, though, is the several page exposition (295-303) on the characteristics of jitney transportation. It is clear that in its natural form, ride-sharing does not lend itself to long-term full time employment. Some anecdotes from the article are a doctor who keeps a car for house calls allowing his son to use the car (sunk cost) as a jitney; the commuters who post their destination and only pick up passengers on their way to/from work; and those individuals who supplement their income with several hours a week of jitney work.
This article supports my original comment (the grandparent) and the parent here that Uber/Lyft should not be viewed as traditional employers.
I would alter the quote below to indicate that taxi driver as an occupation was never an occupation until regulation in the interest of a more lucrative (for the incumbent firms and for the municipalities they operated in) business forced an artificial constriction in the market for public transport.
>But with so many cars on the road, maybe it's an outdated occupation
[0]http://www.jstor.org/discover/724795?sid=21105612783593&uid=...