The green taxi imitative started around the same time that Uber and Lyft opened up their apps online. The green taxi service was an NY based service that would serve the outer boroughs of NYC, providing access to transportation where yellow cabs were scarce.
After five years, the green taxi's have been swamped out by Uber and Lyft cars, and have met an even harder fate than their yellow cab peers. Residents of the outer boroughs can't even find a green cab anymore, as one such resident 55-year-old Selma Huerra, stated to the press "It's like green cabs barely exist here. I almost never see them, especially when I'm looking for one."
The green taxi initiative was headed by NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg back in in 2013, with a promise that the new service would saturate the streets of NY with green to go with the yellow. Bloomberg told the media in 2013 that, "the availability of legal, street-hail taxi service to the millions of New Yorkers who live or work outside of Manhattan's Central Business District."
The green cabs were to be identical in everything to the yellow cabs but in the car color. Cabs would be metered and available. 20% of the cabs would be disabled friendly, and the city of NY sold 6,000 permits in the first year, claiming that they would increase the size to 16,000 by 2016.
That was as far as it went, in fact, only 6,300 green cabs ever hit the streets, and as of the end of 2017, only 4,000 remain.
Green cab investors such as 48-year-old Juan Carlos Quelal told the media that "The city never fulfilled its promise to us. In the beginning, it was very good. We got a lot of support from the promotions." Quelal bought two cab permits with his wife back in 2014, and after 2 years he and his wife sold the cabs due to the losses they made.
The bottom line is that Uber has dominated the NY map. This was seen by reporters that decided to test the case of green taxi availability in the Bronx on the corner of 184th street and grand concourse. Within one hour 20 illegal cabs tried to pick up the reporters, while only three green taxis passed by, but were already full.
Uber dominates NYC; they have over 60,000 cars operating the city and a some of their drivers are ex-taxi drivers that decided to continue working in a livelihood that they know.