It explains the majority of the difference. It's simply not a remotely apple-to-apples comparison to compare yellow cab medallions, which are on the streets constantly, to rideshare license plates, which are not. The difference could even be more than 4X as another commenter points out, as many rideshare drivers are part-time.
I'm curious as to what story you think is being told? To me it's clear that the following things are true:
* Thera are 6x the number of uber drivers on the road.
* A significant portion of those are new traffic
* Substantially fewer rides are given per uber/ride for hire car
There's (much) more traffic and I have a hard time seeing what has changed in the city over the last ten years to make traffic so horrid other than Uber/hire cars. Maybe the decay of the subways? Still, ridership numbers aren't down and population hasn't grown much. If you've got any ideas I'd love to hear 'em.
Listen, I love not dealing with Yellow Cabs. They're a pack of assholes and Uber is far more convenient but you're bending over backward to justify a marginal magnitude difference in rides per car.
FWIW I think a hard cap on the number of hire cars is stupid but we are stuck with De Blasio and even Bloomberg couldn't get congestion pricing passed. Capping new ubers at 100k (the current total) is not really that onerous all considered. It's not like it's gonna make it 2010 again.
