I was a longtime SF resident and remember very well how truly awful the taxi service was in SF before the rideshare apps. You'd call a cranky operator to request a taxi and an hour or two later one might show up. Hail a taxi downtown (if you can find one) and ask to go to the Richmond district only to have the driver tell you to get out of the car because they don't want to go that far. And of course the credit card machines were always "broken" so you had to pay with cash.

Now I'm in NY and I use taxis almost as often as rideshares. The Curb app makes it easy to find a taxi and the prices are almost always lower. But half the time I can't get a taxi through the app at all and have to wander the streets or use Lyft/Uber.