[mdemare]

If there's one country where Uber is needed...

When I was there last year, we were given a list of 5 taxi phone numbers. When you needed a taxi, you'd cycle through the numbers until you found one that 1) answered the phone 2) was available 3) managed to understand where you wanted to be picked up. When we were leaving and needed to catch a bus, I made 15 fruitless phone calls, then asked somebody for a ride.

[Uberphallus]

At least it's cheap-ish (last time I was in Porto, at least).

If there's a country it's France. An airport ride to my place, 16 km (10 miles), no more than 20 minutes, goes for a whooping 60EUR/66USD, more than the roundtrip flight to London. Nope.

And when I needed a ride at 4-5AM I called only to be hung up because "I didn't book it 24h in advance".

[oleganza]

It's not "cheap" if you cannot take a ride. Total cost is a sum of the price, time wasted and the risk of being late. "Cheap" taxi that is impossible to catch is not actually cheap.

That's the same fallacy as when people whine about Uber's "surge pricing". When there is huge demand, Uber prices may go up 2x, but you still will be able to get a ride in 5 minutes instead of waiting half an hour or not even knowing if you will be able to catch a car at all.

[CaptainZapp]

You conveniently omit that Uber, in some cases, jacked up prices 8 fold.

There's a very good reason why taxis are regulated in most jurisdictions. If Uber doesn't like such regulations they're free to try to change it. And they do have very heavy hitting lobbyists on their payroll to do just that.

They are not free, however, to break the law.

[peteretep]

This can of course be solved without Uber; in London, Ubicab manages this seamlessly, while using local taxi companies. They seem to coexist well with Uber, Addison Lee, Hailo, and the rest.