In NYC, your Uber driver is professionally licensed as a taxi/limousine driver and driving a vehicle that is registered as a for-hire vehicle. I'd bet this alone helps close the cost gap between rideshare and taxi, since there's nothing "rideshare" about it really - you're still paying for a professional driver with licensing costs, vehicle registration costs, extra insurances, sometimes even vehicle modifications, etc.

These debates about Uber/Lyft/etc employment status always seem to omit that there are two very distinct classes of people finding work with these services - one group is doing it part time in their personal vehicles, and the other group is doing it full-time in commercial vehicles. The interests of those two groups don't necessarily align.