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Comment by evanextreme | Hacker News Reader

> Uber is literally life-changing

I might be only 26 years old, but even I have memories of my parents easily flagging down taxis in Manhattan. More convenient? Absolutely. "Literally life changing" seems a bit much, though.

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Manhattan is the worst example to compare to. You can now, in literally any suburb, get a ride on demand in 10 minutes or less. I used to have to book a taxi or figure out how to chain multiple buses to get to where I wanted if I was going across town in a suburb.

alright, then in the suburb of new york i lived in (which was, mind you, in the middle of a forest), i could call up the local taxi company and get a cab to me in like... 30 minutes or so. really the only convenience is that it saves me a phone call and from carrying cash.

It also depends on the suburb you were in in New York. If you were in "some" neighborhoods, the taxies would never come.

In New Orleans, when you wanted to get a ride home from a bar, you'd need to try calling taxi services for 30+ minutes, because most of them didn't answer, or their lines were busy. If you got in contact with one, you'd need to wait 30+ minutes for them to show up, if they ever did.

In San Francisco, when the bars would let out, none of the services answered their phones. You'd have to stand outside and try to flag one down, and most of the time they'd roll their window down and ask where you're going, and decide whether or not they want to take you. You could easily spend an hour outside waiting for a taxi.

It's really not that different from Uber. Good luck getting Uber in a remote-ish suburb. Taxis will not go somewhere where it's inconvenient for them.

I do this frequently. When I go back to New Orleans to visit family, I use Uber/Lyft in the suburbs to get around, even including the remote suburbs. They don't come within minutes, like if you were in a city, but I'm able to reliably use it.

Maybe not in Manhattan, one of the central points of one of the biggest cities of the world.

Where I live, the only form of non-personal (your own car or bike) transport was the bus, which comes by 5 times a day, only once on saturdays, and never on sundays. Uber and its local equivalents have allowed me to participate in social events that the long and restrictive bus rides would not allow, and which taxis would be too much of a luxury.

I think that for me it is fair to say it was life-changing. Maybe not as life-changing as other things, but if it wasn't for this kind of service, I wouldn't have some of my best friends.

Most cities in the US did not have either a functional taxi or public transit system.

As someone from Manhattan, you live(d) one of the most unusual existences in human history.

Outside of Manhattan, certain streets in San Francisco, and some parts of Chicago it is life changing.

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