Jitneys were Pittsburgh's illegal answer to its taxi monopoly

Blacks were screwed (like the rest of the city) for 60-plus years by the local Yellow Cab monopoly but they formed their own community car service that actually made them better off than white folks.

Jitneys were — and still are — an important mode of market-made transportation in the black neighborhoods of Pittsburgh.

August Wilson, aka “The Black Shakespeare,” wrote his play “Jitney” about the characters working at a Hill District “jitney station,” where drivers awaited calls for car service from local people.

The jitney system — which is free-market, completely illegal but virtually un-policed — relied on entrepreneurial drivers, word of mouth and cash.

It was essentially Uber before there was Uber and it still operates today in Pittsburgh, where Uber and Lyft have done a community service by destroying the government-protected Yellow Cab monopoly that lasted 70 years and ill-served blacks (and suburbanites) with high fares and lousy, racist ‘service.’

Here’s a jitney article I wrote for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette long ago.