[twblalock]

I remember what it was like to get a taxi in California, even in San Francisco, before Uber and Lyft.

You called some taxi company, might get put on hold, told them where to pick you up, and they would show up anywhere between 30 and 60 minutes later. Sometimes they would never show up. Many smaller cities in California had no taxi service of any kind. And good luck getting a taxi home from a bar after midnight!

Uber and Lyft made it realistic for people to expect that they could actually get a taxi in California in a reasonable amount of time, pretty much any time of day or night. That's why people used them so much. This is not something the older taxi companies or "some random taxi app" will be able to pull off.

[tomjakubowski]

Back in 2010 I regularly used the TaxiMagic app and had more or less the same experience as calling an Uber or Lyft today, just a little pricier.

[JamesBarney]

Where are you located? In Houston before Uber or Lyft I'd routinely get taxi's that wouldn't show up or would show up 6 hrs late. I've had a problem several times with taxi's being rude to my wife. And I've had several female friends who despite riding an Uber 100x more than Taxi's in their life have several times felt unsafe in a Taxi and never felt unsafe in an Uber.