There were plenty of ride hailing apps before Uber all of them sorta failed becuase of bad tech, business model or both.
Uber made it with millions if not billions of funding and sure now it’s more easy to copy since the model and the tech is better understood but that’s just it it too capitalism to refine the model and now they want to effectively socialize it. This might sound cool but in reality it won’t work since this is a chicken and the egg problem and while you can socialize the chicken some one had to design the hen and optimize it before hand.
Taxi unions had no intention to take the risks Uber did despite likely having just as much access to funds with 40-50,000 cab drivers each could’ve easily funded a mini Uber with a few 100s to a few 1000s £s over several years but they chose not too.