The thing that I didn't see in the data is while yes, the longer uber is in a city the less likely you are to wait, there is also a flip side of the driver no longer waiting as long when uber becomes more established in a city.

Let me explain...

When Uber was first in Chicago it was normal to wait 10-15 mins for a ride to pick you up. You would pull the app out while you still had a few things to do in the apartment before you left, order the Uber, and then by the time you were ready it was right out front waiting. The time waiting felt very seamless, although there might have been an actual 10 minute wait. When it also first started drivers were totally okay with waiting a minute or two for you because the demand wasn't as high back then. They didn't want to lose a potential customer. However, now that Uber IS more abundant in Chicago you can no longer do that little technique. Most drivers will get pissy with you if they have to wait outside for more than 30 seconds, or if you are not curbside waiting for the ride when they show up. Since drivers now also have more options for people to pick up, they can be more choosy on the customers they decide to take. They can easily cancel rides if they are too far from the pickup or are waiting to get a new customer. So since you can't "queue" up a ride like the "old days" you have order the ride when you are actually ready to go and are already waiting. Now that you do this, the wait is felt 100% by the customer (which was once avoided), if that makes sense. So what used to feel like nothing now feels like you are waiting in the cold for possible 5-10 whole minutes, which obviously often feels a lot longer that. Thus making you more likely to cancel the ride if you see an empty cab or another opportunity. So there is a bit of a catch 22 here, if I'm using that phrase correctly.

It does makes sense that they don't want to expose this side of things though, because that places more blame on their own quality of drivers. It probably shows that as a city is active longer, the ratings/quality of drivers goes down drastically. I've noticed it quite a bit here in Chicago, and it's really disappointing. The average quality of driver I get nowadays is almost 1 to 1.5 stars lower than what I got 2 years ago.

I'm curious to find out if anyone else has had this same experience or not.