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Comment by davidu | Hacker News Reader

The average wait time in NYC is between 5 and 9 minutes depending on time of day. But many people would say it feels worse than that at peak times (and it likely is).

People finding cabs on 5th avenue at 6pm know there are no cabs to be had. You can't just raise your hand. It could take 15 to 20 minutes to find a cab.

So suggesting that you can get a cab 90% in NYC is a statement of fact, but it's not actually true.

Facts: http://www.schallerconsult.com/taxi/taxifb.pdf

That's one of the many reasons Uber is also crushing it in NYC.

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Seems to me that a simple solution would be people wanting a taxi bidding up the price. So if a taxi is two minutes from completing its current fare, people can start bidding on getting a taxi, and the moment this taxi is free, whoever has the highest bid will win it.

There really are no other workable solutions. The other solution is to get more taxis on the roads, but that would just mean that a lot of taxis would be idle at non-peak hours, and that -- instead of peak hour-taxis being expensive -- the price of taxis in general would rise, because each taxi isn't getting as many fares.

Surge pricing essentially does this on Uber's platform

Right, so Uber is a premium product. It has surge pricing, if you want to ride at peak, you pay.

That's fine. But it means that it isn't going to dislodge yellow cabs any time soon because the price point is entirely different.

You need to spend more time understanding Uber. If you do that, you'll already know this statement is wrong.

> So suggesting that you can get a cab 90% in NYC is a statement of fact, but it's not actually true.

I would have to disagree. I work near the Empire State building and have taken cabs home after work (6pm) plenty of times and have never had to wait more than two red lights to get a cab (lights going N/S take about 45s so that's around 2-3 minutes).

The times you have to worry about is Friday/Saturday night if it is raining. You might have to wait a few minutes then if you want a yellow cab. Black cabs are almost always instantly available but they are a little pricier so I don't count them.

Your singular datapoint (which I would still question) doesn't change the facts in that report.

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