[jeremymims]

New York has a solution for this. It's called a livery car (they're usually Lincoln Town Cars). This is especially prudent when you have a flight to catch.

You call and they send someone at the appointed time.

It's cheaper than Uber and the drivers are the same.

Some have phone numbers you'll never forget: [phone] and 866-666-6666.

[kapnobatairza]

Agreed 100%. Uber isn't adding anything disruptive to NYC, they are just adding another channel for booking town cars. In my personal experience, the town car services I've been using for over a decade that I call to book with have been faster and more reliable than my experiments with Uber.

As I mentioned in my own comment, however, this makes me wonder if there is a space for a PAAS for Town Car services to easily roll out their own web and mobile booking apps... That way they don't even need to cut Uber in at all.

[FelixP]

But at that point, why not just aggregate the services, in which case you've effectively become Uber?

[kapnobatairza]

Because if you operate your own booking app you can set your own prices and you don't have to pay Uber a cut.

You'd also be able to use it to operate a private network of drivers. For example, large corporations can roll out a private web/mobile booking app for the private network of drivers they have for their employees. Not many companies still have drivers on payroll in the US, but in other countries like the UAE or South Korea this is still more common.

Why do some businesses use Google Apps in the cloud and others maintain their own CMS systems on their own equipment? Some businesses prefer in-house solutions.

[nine_k]

Sometimes you can even stop a livery car that is vacant, as you would a taxi. Be prepared to pay in cash :)

[halviti]

I do this all the time.

I estimate the cost of a cab fare in my head, then I flag down a livery car and offer them less than what a cab would cost.

Sometimes I have to barter a little if I'm shooting too low, but I'm rarely turned down.

It's a much more relaxing ride when you don't have to worry about a meter running, and cheaper too.

[tlrobinson]

Do they have mobile apps you can use to book them? Can you track their location on their way to pick you up?

[halviti]

Yes, they have a mobile app, it's called "phone".

You call them, give them an address and a time, it takes less than a minute.

I've never had one be late, and I can imagine a million better things to do with your time than watching a dot move on a map.