[wtvanhest]

"I'm sure there's a huge amount of interest for this in SF, and taxi service is so bad, you might even be able to make this an election issue. But other cities like Vancouver I'm sure don't have as bad of an issue, so it might be harder to make it an issue that politicians will take notice of."&

I've lived in Orlando, DC, SF (Santa Clara, but went to SF regularly) and Boston. All of those cities have major issues with cabs. My experience in NYC is better, but I have never lived there. At any rate, Uber is doing well, in part because cabs are terrible.