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Comment by matwood | Hacker News Reader

> Taxis died because it's a horrible user experience

And in small cities/towns, getting a taxi was nearly impossible a lot of the times. And if you did get one, you had to have cash. In my 20s I had the personal phone numbers of a couple who ran a car service. I would only ride with them after another taxi home (probably unlicensed) where the driver was drinking smh.

I wonder how many DUIs have been avoided since Uber came about.

People always point out big cities, but forget how abysmal taxis were in small towns.

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> People always point out big cities, but forget how abysmal taxis were in small towns.

Not just that, but people forget how bad they were in cities prior to the pressure Uber created. The article asks "Why Is a Company That Lost $20 Billion Claimed to Be Successful?" but the answer is obvious. It transformed the industry. It made a big impact on my life. I no longer had to stress about getting a cab home from pretty much anywhere. When traveling, I know I won't get my face ripped off or have an issue with mistranslation. If it were around earlier, I would have likely driven and made some extra cash when I was home from college. No one would hire me for a few weeks or extremely variable schedule so this would have been a great option.

Today's cabs are better behaved but only because people have alternatives.

How small are we talking? My parents live in a town of ~2-3k, you aren't getting a taxi from there without arranging in advice, app or not.

Or my hometown of ~60k, I can't say availability of app based taxis is better or worse than availability at a taxi rank, though obviously there is the benefit of not having to get to a taxi rank.

The city I live in now of 1 million, app based taxis are a clear win, mainly because most taxi ranks fit ~5-6 taxis max and so at busy times there would be a queue simply because of that fact. That said, you're going to be waiting as long for a pickup at closing time via an app as for someone to show up a rank.

(Extending to app based services in general as actual Uber is a niche player in my country, basically only used by tourists so hard to get rides that aren't going to or from the airport or a couple of tourist hot spots)

> And in small cities/towns, getting a taxi was nearly impossible a lot of the times.

Not just small cities. I lived in Las Vegas for many years. Try getting a taxi to take you from the airport to the suburbs at 2am. I got hung up on by two taxi services. When I finally got someone to pick me up, I had to wait 30 mins for them to drop off other fares to the Strip before they would take me.

Was in a small town recently with a few Uber/ lyft drivers. During peak times there was never a driver available when i tried to get one through the app. I talked to one driver and she said to give her a call next time -- during peak times she turns off the Uber app and drives for whoever calls her.

> And in small cities/towns, getting a taxi was nearly impossible a lot of the times

And in some towns and cities it's now becoming difficult to get an uber, as there are fewer drivers around than there were. And they conveniently drove the local cab firms out of business so you're just generally SoL

>And in small cities/towns, getting a taxi was nearly impossible a lot of the times.

My experience has been the opposite. In small towns you cannot get use rideshare apps, but you can dial a taxi service. This has been the case in every town of less than 1,000 I've needed a ride in.

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