[kelnos]

I think NYC is not a great example, as it's one of the few places in the US with a decently-good public transit system, and the density to support a large-enough number of taxis.

In SF, Uber (and Lyft), despite the higher prices, is still much better than the alternatives for most trips. I suspect the same is true for many other places, especially for trips in/out/adjacent to a dense city.

I'm thinking of things like when I visit my sister in Maryland. I fly into Dulles, get an Uber/Lyft, and I'm there in 25-30 minutes at a cost of around $35-40. I could take the new silver metro line into DC (pre-pandemic it wasn't finished, so you'd have to take a bus from Dulles to the nearest completed station), and then the red line back out, but then the trip is around 90 minutes (plus getting my sister to drive me 8 minutes from the nearest metro station). Much cheaper, certainly, but orders of magnitude less convenient.