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Comment by maxaf | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure if someplace like Lancaster, PA (totally random example; it's a city I enjoy visiting) even needs a service like Uber. There is nothing in the value prop that demands that it be scaled up, down & out to fit everywhere in the world.

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> I'm not sure if someplace like Lancaster, PA (totally random example; it's a city I enjoy visiting) even needs a service like Uber

I dive in Dutch Springs (near Bethlehem, Pennsylvania) from time to time. Bus out of New York and Uber for the last mile. Without Uber, those are hotel, restaurant, equipment, facilities and bus expenses I would not be spending there.

You don't need an app for 50% of that use case. You need taxi drivers hanging out at the train station/bus depot.

People that want to stop drunk driving would disagree. Taxis are way to unreliable in the vast majority of US cities to be used as transport to/from a dinner with drinks.

Yep. The primary way I get to/from drinking events is Uber/Lyft. The other use case is when going somewhere without parking. Taxis were always very unreliable for trips like this; they'd show up late or not at all, especially for leaving events late at night.

This is what I don't understand. When I lived in the Boston area, I used Uber instead of taxis, because of this neat little feature Uber (and Lyft) had called "showing up". Sometimes when I called a cab company, I wasn't even able to reach the dispatcher (maybe 20% of the time, because I was often calling in the very early morning). When I spoke to the dispatcher, I could never be certain that he actually understood what I was saying. If those hurdles were overcome, there was about a 75% chance that taxi would show up, but the time of arrival was always uncertain.

I could not have cared less about the cost of Uber. I'd have paid ten times the cost of a cab, in order to have a service I could rely on. I've never once been stood-up by an Uber or Lyft driver. Reliability is what's important - little things like the car not being filthy and the driver not screaming at me about the Yom Kippur War are just extras.

Why don't taxi companies just clone (as closely as they can) the Uber dispatch and driver tracking technologies?

As I understand it, taxi companies have done just that - they now have apps as well.

The Amish. No joke.

My dad's from there. The guy who lives next door to my grandparents drives a truck for the Amish since they can't.

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