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Comment by spaceywilly | Hacker News Reader

Here is an article from 2014 that discusses this trend:

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/02/fashion/how-uber-is-chang...

One thing I didn’t see mentioned, why didn’t people just take a cab before Uber? Was it just too inconvenient?

Yes. Getting a cab into the city/nightlife is difficult but possible. But if you don't know when or where you're going home from. B/c you want to hang out with your friends and moving around, then coordinating a cab ride home was near impossible. Only exception was NYC where the density of cabs in nightlife locations kinda/sorta-of solved this.

Based on my experiences going out in the pre-Uber world: When taxis are in high demand they’re also every hard to find. Usually you could find one in ~15 minutes but not always. And back then they’d sometimes insist on cash so if you didn’t carry enough you’re out of luck.

So I’d say that while convenience is one factor, it’s more about reliability. Lyft/Uber just work. Surge pricing is frustrating but it does create the right incentive to get more cars on the road.

Because they were absolutely terrible. No feedback to back-pressure terrible service and scams. No pre-quoted fares. No arrival estimates. No reliability.

I can’t speak for LA, but taking a cab in other cities sucks and sucked. Dispatch was rude and inaccurate and you had to actively watch and assess the meter if you didn’t want to get scammed in the cab itself. Also if the driver didn’t want to go the direction you were headed you were SOL. This can still happen with ride shares of course, but it happens when you are trying to find a ride instead of when the ride arrives.

> why didn’t people just take a cab before Uber

This is addressed in sibling comments, but basically it was impossible to get one, especially late at night, and if you did, it would cost a fortune.

This is becoming the case with Lyft and Uber now.

When calling for a cab (in most places you need to call a central dispatch to get one, hailing only works if you’re in the middle of a major city), you have to call into a dispatch service and they put out a request over the radio. Cabbies each decide if they want to take the fare, and if nobody does then too bad for you. There’s no feedback telling you if someone accepted and if you’re too far out of town, it’s very possible that no one will ever show up. I’ve definitely sat for hours waiting for a cab and there’s no way to know the status.

At least with these apps, you know if the ride was accepted and when they’ll be there. If nobody accepts, you can make other arrangements.

Well Uber and Lyft were subsidized by investors and naive drivers — cabbies negitiatee their worth and thus it was a much lower margin experience for consumer. Eventually when Uber needs to be profitable and drivers demand real wages, all that happened before will happen again. But we will have nice apps at least as we wait.

nah, the cabbies had government sponsored monopoly, so they had no incentive to improve. For example NY Taxi Medallion (permission to drive a cab) was sold for hundred thousands of dollars.

Even when Lyfr/Uber gets more expensive, there would atill be competition, so it should not suck as much.

Inconvenient, unreliable, expensive.

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