That was effective in cities with good (or any) taxi service. In Pittsburgh, Uber and Lyft have utterly changed people's ability to get around the city.

One Saturday night we wanted to go out to a place 10 minutes away. We called a taxi cab around 7:30/8:00. We were told that it would be between 2.5 and 3 hours for a cab, if one came. We were considered "out of the way" when we were a 10 minute ride from downtown/the main bar area in the city. Forget about getting a cab back from those bars. We used jitney cabs all the time to get home. Yellow cabs wouldn't bother or were too infrequent.

I remember jitney's in Pgh !! In the 70's I used to ride in jitney cars with my mother to get back from the grocery store. In some cities, "jitneys" are called "hacks"-- unlicensed cab drivers driving their own cars. Perfectly safe if they're neighborhood folks that you know.

There used to be a similar/related practice called "slugging" as well, it seems to have faded as Uber rose up.

Great point -- ridesharing apps have genuinely contributed something important in areas that didn't use to have much taxi service. My point is limited specifically to big cities that already had decent service -- in those places, there wasn't a significant improvement brought by Uber and friends.

5 minutes would be fine. But sometimes it was more like 45 minutes to an hour. You wonder if a cab is ever going to show up. That's why I started using the apps - you know the driver can get in touch with you and you can see where the car is.

Yeah, but you have to guess at which cab company to call and then dig up the number.

With the Curb app, your request goes out to multiple cab companies and you usually get a cab that is very close.

For me this can be problematic in my second language, and near-impossible in my third, fourth, and fifth languages. I travel a lot and it is the only time I ever use Uber.