[Kalium]

San Francisco is an instructive example. Prior to Uber, calling a taxi in SF gave you a 50% chance of one showing up in some functionally unknowable amount of time. 50% is not an exaggeration, it was sometimes below that, and you would have no idea if you should expect your cab in five minutes or fifty. Then you would be charged some amount of money you could in theory anticipate but in practice could not. Should the driver misbehave in some manner, there was theoretical but in practice missing accountability.

The drivers were then exploited ruthlessly by medallion-owners.

Uber became very popular very quickly because it addressed a number of those consumer pain points up front. You could know for sure if a car was going to come, have a quite good idea of how long it would be, and get a price in advance. Sure, your complaints would likely be ignored, but nothing new there.

[kevindamm]

Having lived in SF before Uber, I firmly believe their success was accelerated by just how bad taxis in SF were. Sometimes I would call dispatch and hear interminable muzak (really, tens of minutes with nobody picking up). But that was at least better than getting through but then never actually having a cab arrive. Never experienced a worse taxi system. The sus black cars that randomly solicited rides were almost appealing in that environment.

I still don't think Uber was a good outcome, even if it was better in many ways.

[warcher]

Not SF but I recall the accepted manner of doing business in my city, should you want a taxi on the big party holidays, was to gather your group and war dial taxi companies until somebody actually arrived. All of them. They would swear they’d show up, and you would swear you’d wait for them to show up, and everybody knew they were lying.

Then when you wanted to go home you’d do the same thing except out on the street and you’d steal the first unattended cab, regardless of who’d called them.