Public transit and car rentals are a poor substitute for a taxi service.

I must be weird. I travel over 100 days a year. I do a lot of walking, sometimes rent cars, take public transportation, etc. I take taxis etc. relatively rarely.

Each of those options is perfectly fine for transportation if you planned and or intended to use them, what I mean is that whenever I've used a taxi or taxi-like service, car rental and/or public transportation would not have been a valid substitute or even possible.

Car rental because you have to pick up the car and later drop it off and the costs are significantly higher than a taxi, and public transportation because it's slower, more crowded (therefore more difficult with luggage) and doesn't always go directly where you want to go.

On a city-wide scale you can't expect car rentals and public transportation to be a valid replacement for a taxi/taxi-like service.

Have you been to Europe? I live in Poland and use public transportation as much as Uber - being able to afford both just as easily.

I have lived in Europe, although not Poland, but my point is not that public transportation is not useful, just that it's not always a suitable replacement for a taxi.

Taxi service and rental cars are a poor substitute for public transit.

I love that I live in one of the few cities with a train that leaves directly from the airport.

Manchester, UK? Helsinki, Finland? Tokyo, Japan?

(I now wonder how many others I don't know about from personal experience!)

Chicago

Atlanta

and who do you think is paying for your cheap Lyft trips? Does not matter which ride sharing company you use right now. It is all VC money. Stop the whole Lyft has higher ethical moral ground BS. It is all about capitalism and supply demand.

Supposedly Lyft is on its way to profitability [1]. Twitter is still not yet profitable, but it shouldn't stop me from using the service if I find it useful.

> and who do you think is paying for your cheap Lyft trips?

Mostly my own contribution, and partially VC money.

1. http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/12/pipsqueak-lyft-could-reach-pr...

Of course you should not stop using it if you prefer it. It was implied here that only uber rides were cheaper because of VC money. Which is not the case. Same applies for Lyft.