[timr]

Moreover, the parent misses the forest for the trees: yeah, the congestion fee is lower than the fare, but the fare is vastly more expensive than driving a car.

The current pricing model encourages resource sharing (this was true before congestion pricing as well), and the choice of whether or not you take a car or a cab is a function of the amortized cost of use per unit time. So yeah, just in terms of congestion fee it's a little bit cheaper to take an Uber for a single trip, but if you ride around in an Uber all day long, it's way, way less cost efficient than driving your own car.