Lyft gains on Uber as ride-sharing runs past taxis in New York City

Patrick T. Fallon | Bloomberg | Getty Images

An attendee at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Jan. 6, 2016, waits for a ride in the Uber and Lyft reserved staging area.

The shift from taxis to ride-sharing companies may have hit a tipping point in New York City, while Lyft continues to show impressive growth.

A new report by the business travel expense firm Certify shows Lyft is gaining on both taxis and Uber. The percentage of business travel receipts for Lyft rides in the third quarter climbed 3 percent, the biggest quarterly increase since Certify began tracking expense reports.

While Lyft receipts cover just 11 percent of the business travel expenses analyzed by Certify, it’s ahead of taxis at 7 percent and it is gaining on Uber, which still dominates the category with 54 percent of the receipts.

This is the first quarter Certify has seen a drop in the percentage of receipts for Uber rides. Car rental receipts fell to 28 percent of the business travel category.

A separate report on ride-sharing shows Uber hit a milestone in New York City. Uber passed taxis in New York City in July for the number of dispatched trips, Morgan Stanley said. It is the first time Uber logged more trips in New York than taxis, according to Morgan Stanley.

“We believe that Uber now has a larger share of the mobility ‘pie’ in New York City than yellow taxis,” Morgan Stanley wrote in a note to clients.

To be sure, people shifting from taxis to Uber and other ride-sharing operators in New York City has been happening for years. In fact, Morgan Stanley says New York’s taxi operators have now seen about 35 consecutive months of year-over-year declines in trips per day and in revenue.