In the end you will have a service costing the same as a regular Taxi but without all the benefits of them being licensed. Taxi licensing may be screwed up and unfair in the US but in many parts of the world it works well.
Despite all the supposed downsides of ridesharing, it continues to be immensely more popular than the traditional taxi service even as the price gap closes. Because the traditional taxi service is a garbage rent seeking incumbent that needs to die for the good of all.
I catch cabs or ridesharing on a daily basis for work, and cabs are just fucking awful compared to ridesharing.
In Germany, the cabs belong to the company and drivers are employees (not going in debt for medallions like in the US). The cars are usually in good shape Mercedes and the system is 2-tiered: Taxis and Funkmietwagen (callable cabs). Taxis are allowed to use taxi only roads, can wait for walk-by passengers, are more expensive and pay higher licensing fees. Both can't just tell you "No" without very good reason.
Funkmietwagen have to follow normal car rules, can only be called in advance, usually have slightly cheaper cars, but are cheaper.
Uber tried disregarding the laws in Germany, was told "No" and now is only active in some very few cities and only with their higher end service, operating as normal Funkmietwagen.
The only thing they accomplished was improving the app situation.
In South Africa, it's very different. Taxis cost 3-5 times what you pay for an Uber, are often old, shoddy cars and certainly like to decide not to pick someone up (which I think is technically illegal).
Uber is thriving and mostly seems like a safer and better solution there.
This may be true in some places, but where there is taxi competition this isn't true. You wouldn't ride with that taxi company again, and just pick another one (Where Uber might just be the other one as it's just another taxi company). I think it's a bad idea to try to argue whether Uber has a global market niche without looking at global circumstances. This varies in cities across the globe. The experiences in say London, Stockholm and Los Angeles are very different.
But I'll take Grab anyway. The taxi experience is really garbage. It doesn't help that there is a language issue too.
Most taxi services here have excellent apps themselves and are cheaper than what Uber offered while they were allowed to operate (they are not just a glorified taxi service since non-taxi drivers aren't allowed on their service).
For example (last time I was there, and I doubt that it has changed much), if you get in a cab at JFK, he had to take you anywhere in Manhattan / Queens / Brooklyn / Bronx, regardless of time of day, likelihood of a return fare, disabilities, etc. Otherwise, the medallion faced sanctions.
A rideshare can simply decline.
another time it was early in the morning and i needed to go to oakland airport and there were very few drivers available. the one who was suppose to pick me up took 20 minutes to get over there, and when he kept missing my intersection for some reason he just dropped the ride. i complained to the company and they didn't do shit. (think this one was lyft though).
If I'm paying the same as a cab it doesn't matter, as long as the driver is accountable for their behaviour, state of their vehicle and driving it is and always will be a superior experience to traditional cabs.
I also find it doubtful that the Uber experience will ever cost as much, unless they completely kill off all competition (not going to happen). They have no moat - the network effect does not enable them to have a true monopoly, or even duopoly because the concept is simple enough to implement with an app and a team.
Taxis have the "broken" card machines, the ads playing on the little screen, and the 30 minute wait for a ride if you're not in a high-density urban center.
https://www.theawl.com/2012/07/how-much-more-do-taxi-fares-c...
2012 $2.50 first 1/5 mi. $2.50 per mile. $0.50 per 1 min.
uberX 2019 (without counting inflation - ~10% since 2012): Per Minute: $0.66 Per Mile: $1.46 Minimum Fare: $7.19
Taxis are competitive for very short trips, but 3+ miles they're almost double (175%)!