London and Tokyo cabbies know their streets. But in no place else I've been in the world is this true. Most cabbies are recent immigrants who barely know how to find their way home and have difficulty with the local language. Before Uber taught cabbies the value of GPS, you had to direct your cabbie from the back seat with your own GPS.
This is very dependent on the locale. Around here, it's true that taxi drivers on average know the streets better than Uber drivers, but it's still very hit-and-miss, and if they don't know it, you're stuck. Following a GPS may have its problems, but you're unlikely to not get there at all.
Why do you need to know the streets if GPS and maps are built into everything? It's like saying, oh no, those "automobiles" are no good, their drivers don't even know how to feed a horse. Frankly I _want_ them to rely on GPS. Or else they can (and do) drive you the route which maximizes their miles billed.
In an ever-growing number of places, the value of years of knowing "the fucking streets" is dwarfed by something like Waze: a GPS app with real-time traffic information and real-time crowd-sourced versions of that street knowledge.
yeah of course, too bad people who drives Uber are not using Waze. Personally in various cities i had to rely on classic Taxi after having issues with Uber, like calling 20 times a ride and the guy never show up/canceled after 20 minutes (Amsterdam, 3x) or driver got lost with the support of the GPS of course (Lisbon, 5x), or the time i had to tell him the way ( he was using gps ).
For my needs it's a useless service cause they cannot give a standard good service.