Unable to beat them, cabbies join Uber and Lyft in ride sharing

Taxi companies across the US waged a bitter, high-profile battle to keep Uber Technologies Inc and Lyft Inc from bringing the sharing economy to cabs.They lost.

Now the cabbies are adopting a if-you-can’t-beat-them, join-them-strategy.

Pittsburgh Yellow Cab, for example, rebranded itself last year as zTrip. A century-old fixture in Steel City, it launched an app and offered a hybrid of services: accepting cash along with credit cards, letting rides be hailed from a corner or scheduled online and forgoing Uber’s controversial surge pricing during peak periods. “The pie’s bigger,” said Jamie Campolongo, the company’s president. “So why not get over