This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, July 23rd, 2015.

I'm Caleb Brown.

New York Mayor Bill DeBlazio is temporarily backing away from a plan to cap the number of cars offered by ride sharing services

like Uber and Lyft, but he says he'll happily revisit the issue soon.

Matthew Feeney, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute, talks about what this decision means.

As with other cities in the country, Uber has entered and caused a bit of controversy.

Taxi companies are not happy and local lawmakers are not happy.

So the whole fight that has been on display recently

between ride sharing companies like Uber and lawmakers and regulators in New York is actually

although prominent the only a recent example of ride sharing companies having to deal with

regulators and lawmakers and cities.

So what was the argument for trying to limit the number of cars operated by ride sharing services

in New York.

So the proposal was that companies like Uber would have to limit the number of new drivers they take on by 1% a year.

And this was touted as a measure to combat congestion.

Now it seems like at least to me a rather curious argument to make.

Uber accounts for about 20,000 cars in New York City,

which is of course a city that is full of cars.

Hundreds of thousands pour into Manhattan alone every day.

It seems odd to me that a 1% increase,

which would be about 200 cars a year,

is an effective or immediately good way

...