These centers embody the growing divide on New York City’s streets between old and new, tradition and innovation,<br />that have forced the taxi industry to embrace new ways to counter the growing reach of the ride-hailing apps.<br />Other ride-hailing apps have set up driver centers elsewhere in the city: Juno has a center near La Guardia Airport<br />that serves about 150 drivers a day; Via has a center in Manhattan that, among other things, offers free parking for new drivers.<br />Shaon Chowdhury, 39, who manages a yellow taxi garage in Queens, said he was seeing more Uber drivers pick up shifts driving yellow cabs<br />because Uber’s “rates are low” and they cannot make enough money.<br />Despite the conflicts, Uber is a relentless competitor, and the taxi and Uber centers<br />that have opened in different sections of the same neighborhood in Queens are a visible manifestation of how the rival industries continue to take on each other out of view of their customers.<br />“It makes it simple and easy if you want to start driving for Uber,” said Sumeet Singh, 22,<br />a college student who was visiting the center for the first time a couple of weeks ago.<br />Even so, Mr. Gathers said he had heard so much about Uber that he could not resist checking out its new center recently.
