[Disruptive_Dave]

Curious as to what makes you believe #3. Transplant here, but many life-long friends are NYC born and bred, and nearly all of them choose Uber over cabs quite often. Maybe the locals you know have just become numb to how shitty cabs here are ("it is what it is") and are fine with it?

[potatolicious]

Life-long born-and-bred New Yorkers probably didn't grow up in Manhattan.

"New York City" is not synonymous and interchangeable with "Manhattan below 96th St".

[nicwolff]

I'm a live-long born-and-bred Manhattanite and I use uberX any time I'm not already on the street; it's roughly the cost of a yellow cab and much more convenient and pleasant. (And you get an SUV about 1/2 the time, even after they stopped forcing the SUV drivers to accept uberX calls.)

I also, just last week, took my mom to the hospital lying down in an Uber SUV which was (even at the 1.5 rate) a whole lot cheaper than an ambulance, and more convenient even than their own car which we would have had to get out of the garage and then park at the hospital.