That may have been an experience, but it was not my experience at all. I have found taxis to just be better than Ubers/Lyfts. And yes, that includes when they were new.

I found taxis waiting in taxi stands in known locations of busy areas, or they would come if you call. If they had to come, I found them far reliable in terms of "when the vehicle would get there" than Uber or Lyft. Both of which promise arrivals and then often have to recalculate.

I found taxis to be more predictable in price. I could get a pretty accurate estimate from a taxi driver. Meanwhile, Uber and Lyft only gave you their estimate and had no problem silently charging you more. (I believe that has been fixed).

And cabs ability to take cash was great. Yes, rarely they tried "the machine is not working", but that was rare and easy to deal with like you said. Meanwhile, if you wanted to do something non-standard (e.g. make multiple stops[0]) you could, either by paying a small cash extra or because they were a person not a machine they could handle it.

Meanwhile, the reason there was so much taxi regulation was that without it traffic becomes unbearable. There would be hour long traffic jams of ubers going to pick people up near the front door whenever an event let out, as opposed to people walking to where the taxis had to pick them up.[0] But in general they are horrible for traffic.

[0] Uber/Lyft can handle that now, but could not earlier