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Letters

Taxi medallion owners seek recognition that they’re on unequal terrain

Regarding your April 24 editorial “Scrap taxi medallions”: No one is arguing that the landscape hasn’t changed. However, state and city governments have failed to rectify the fact they continue to impose immense regulations and financial hardship on taxi medallion owners while allowing the new Ubers and Lyfts of the world to provide the same service without following the established rules.

Yes, something needs to give. Thank you for finally realizing that. However, if Massachusetts and its various cities and towns are no longer going to use the medallion system, then they must drop their rules and compensate the owners who followed them all these years.

Contrary to your editorial, the cities controlled the number of medallions and how they were distributed, not “monopolistic” medallion owners.

No one in the taxi industry is trying to stop progress. We are, however, asking for regulation that makes our passengers safe and that recognizes the unequal treatment allowed by the state in the last three years, since transportation network companies arrived on the scene.

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Mansour Bahrampouri, Malden

The writer has been a Boston taxi medallion owner since 1979.