I mean you just pressed a few more buttons and told the cab company where you were headed and they'd show up in a reasonable 15 min or so. I'm an NYC native and took a lot of cabs and car services - not saying it was perfect - but it wasn't a dystopia. I can only once recall having trouble getting a cab from park slope to ozone park - there were no cars around.

Waiting was simply due to the nature of the cab/car market back then - cabs were radio dispatched and yellow cabs only cared about Manhattan and JFK/LaGuardia leaving us outlier schmucks with a paltry selection of mom and pop car services with few cars.