[stormbrew]

Meanwhile, in drops in credibility, you say this:

> While there is some variability in taxi arrival time (just as there is with Lyft or Uber arrival time), taxis typically are no later or more difficult to estimate. You just tell them when the taxi should arrive and that's when it will be there.

A charitable interpretation of this is that you must live a charmed life. The only people I know who say things like this are people who have cars and don't tend to use much else or live in and exclusively travel in very large cities.

I have literally waited two hours for a taxi, on a normal friday night. Multiple times. My average wait for a taxi in the city I live in has usually been on the order of 30+ minutes, peak hours or off. Other cities have not been much better, unless they were cities like New York where normal hailing actually works.

Also, smaller cities don't get these wonderful taxi apps you're talking about until Uber comes into town and forces them to compete. Hell, in many cities reliably being able to pay with a credit card only becomes possible when a rideshare company comes to town, before that "the machine is broken!"

[p4wnc6]

I live in a rural area of northern Indiana that is about 1 hour outside of a medium-sized city (around 250,000). I don't own a car. I rely on rides from family, and unusual combinations of taxis and buses when in town.

I've experienced none of the problems you describe, and I've used taxis in small (less than 30,000 people), medium (100,000 - 300,000 people) and large (Boston (where I lived for a long time), Chicago (nearest large city to me now), New York (visited friends there many times), Austin (work travel), Paris (worked there in 2010), and various other places I traveled) cities and towns.

If you call with a bit of advanced notice, it's rarely an issue. If you call at the last minute, of course there's a problem. But the exact same problems happen with Uber/Lyft.

[stormbrew]

Well, no. Apparently if you call with a bit of advance notice it's rarely an issue.

If I do it, who the hell knows. I've called the night before and still waited almost an hour for a taxi beyond when it was supposed to come. The difference between taxi and uber/lyft variance is night and day, in my experience.

Your experience seems to be exceptional to me.

[p4wnc6]

Meanwhile, your experience seems exceptional to me.