The real advantage Uber has is brand trust when taxis go back to their shady and anti-competitive business practices and the regulatory environment relaxes. The important question is if brand trust will be worth anything.
They may not go where you want, they may not be available where you are, because you are not in the right part of the city.
Sounds like you're suffering from a pretty severe filter bubble.
I'd say it is bad form to base an argument like this as fact, when there is clearly significant evidence of the inverse. We know that Uber has targeted airport usage, with a seemingly offline cache of airport GPS locations baked into the app - to tap the travel market... I'd be hesitant to say this doesn't alone make an impact.
Expect Austin to occur elsewhere (Uber and Lyft leaving due to local regulation, and competitors filling the void).
Uber is not an angel, but at least with one app we have a lot of people pointing out privacy violations. With two (say, Lyft in US cities), there's some choice. If Uber really fails and the taxis end up running the streets again, I don't see any real pressure to make good ride hail / pay apps.
Features were pretty much on par with Uber.
Depends on a market I guess. Here you have a single app for all local taxi companies (actually, there are few competing apps, but you get a point), you can even select which companies do you want to use via checkboxes, because their price differs. Same centralized service works with SMS too, if you don't want to install app or have an ancient cell phone.
The few experiences I've had with local Taxi systems, coming from a everyone-drives-a-car suburban background, have been awful. Overcharging, credit card machine breakdown, and unreliability of driver arrival estimation have made me seek out more expensive alternatives, just to avoid the hassle.
I now live in a city where I take public transport 90% of the time. But that 10% has been made so much easier by Uber and Lyft(they offer the "same" features, so they are the same in my book). They tell me; How long until the driver is here(often incorrect, but only by a small factor), how long the trip will take(often incorrect, by only by a small factor), and how much it will cost(often correct or guaranteed).
None of the features above sound unique to Uber/Lyft, the only difference between them and Taxi's are subsidization by Capitalization. I've heard of Flywheel offering the same app features Uber/Lyft do, but Uber's are often under ~$10 where I am, which a Taxi can take anywhere from $25-$45. But if Uber's subsidization goes dry, as long as there's an feature-like alternative, I'd still pay for that.