Up until the beginning of the year, 90% of the time you'll be hailing a gypsy cab. The only time you'd get a yellow when leaving the BX was at shift change which is around 5pm/5am for a lot of them. Not that there's anything wrong with a gypsy cab, but you're not supposed to hail them, which ties into a lot of the problems Uber appears to be facing in NYC.

I will say a lot has changed with the introduction of the Boro cabs (green cabs). I don't remember exactly when they were introduced, but getting a cab is considerably easier now.

So, while I agree with what you are saying, I think it's a little Manhattan-centric.

Agreed - and that was sort of my point about Uber taking advantage of regulation, though I didn't phrase it well. The artificial scarcity of taxi medallions meant that demand outstripped supply outside of Manhattan. Now they're finally, slowly, fixing that.

Even cabs (green and yellow use the same fare structure) are priced way out of line with what the gypsy cabs were negotiating in many parts of the outer boros. UberX is another 30+% again on top of that.

It looks to me like uber's biggest market in NYC is not people who live in outer boros and would otherwise have hailed a green or gypsy cab but people who would otherwise have taken a pre-arranged black car because hailing a cab is for the proles. That market isn't nothing, but it's far from the whole thing.

People finding cabs on 5th avenue at 6pm know there are no cabs to be had. You can't just raise your hand. It could take 15 to 20 minutes to find a cab.

So suggesting that you can get a cab 90% in NYC is a statement of fact, but it's not actually true.

Facts: http://www.schallerconsult.com/taxi/taxifb.pdf

That's one of the many reasons Uber is also crushing it in NYC.

There really are no other workable solutions. The other solution is to get more taxis on the roads, but that would just mean that a lot of taxis would be idle at non-peak hours, and that -- instead of peak hour-taxis being expensive -- the price of taxis in general would rise, because each taxi isn't getting as many fares.

That's fine. But it means that it isn't going to dislodge yellow cabs any time soon because the price point is entirely different.

I would have to disagree. I work near the Empire State building and have taken cabs home after work (6pm) plenty of times and have never had to wait more than two red lights to get a cab (lights going N/S take about 45s so that's around 2-3 minutes).

The times you have to worry about is Friday/Saturday night if it is raining. You might have to wait a few minutes then if you want a yellow cab. Black cabs are almost always instantly available but they are a little pricier so I don't count them.

Now car2go, there's the future of cars on call. Especially in a city like Vancouver where you can nearly always find one within a couple of blocks.

One reason is that a good part of their claimed novelty is being able to hail a cab via mobile-phone app (as well as get pricing and such), which is not actually novel in many markets. In much of Europe the existing taxi companies have that feature and it works just fine; it's not too hard to add it as an incremental improvement to the traditional radio taxi. I used the app from 'AAA Taxi' a bunch in Prague last week, and I don't see what Uber would offer above the existing functionality.

Both important to me, and I'd at least assume a few others. I absolutely hate the stress of having to deal with some angry cabbie and 5 minutes of BS because I dare use a credit card vs. pay cash.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/may/30/will-uber-kil...

Uber needs to obey the regulatory rules of the industry. Either they don't have a pricing meter (and thus journey price is agreed before hand) or they do have a price meter and all Uber drivers are regulated like any other black cab driver.

They can't ignore laws just because those laws are inconvenient to them.

I completely agree with you, but at the same time, for whatever reason companies (Uber / Airbnb) have been able to completely ignore rules & laws to the tune of tens of billions of dollars (in valuations).

It's almost "might makes right": ignore rules and grow as fast as possible, with the hope that you'll grow faster than the legal system can take you down. By the time the legal system could do anything, you're big enough to change the rules.

But now Chesky is rich, so he gives away money and pretends that he's something other than an enormous fucking asshole.

But that's how you disrupt markets!

The price of a London cab is regulated. Maybe that price is wrong. Uber can take advantage of it, but do you think the London taxi industry is really going to sit back and watch its market disappear without even trying to change price?

And the cab driver protests are more rooted in the fact that they had to spend a very long time learning 'The Knowledge' before being let out on the road, and that Uber has no such requirement. So, either it's necessary and they're letting Uber off the hook, or it isn't necessary and TfL has been lying to drivers.

So, I think it's more complex than just being "threatened by Uber".

Case in point:

https://twitter.com/newyorkcityliz/status/470010209403150336

Edit: Fixed my idiom. Thanks dragonwriter.

http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/case+in+point

Like many other things The Knowledge has been superseded by a computer.

Maybe you mean s/NYC/Manhattan/?

This is not true in much of the outer boroughs (and also in much of uptown Manhattan). In fact, in an attempt to address the problem, NYC created an entirely new class of cab that can only pick people up outside Manhattan.

I'd really be interested to see how their revenue breaks down between larger cities with urban cores (SF, Seattle) and other areas that are more spread out (LA, etc.)

If you are in select parts of manhattan below 150th st, you can get a taxi very easily.

If you're in any of the other boroughs, you usually can't count on being able to hail a taxi unless you live on a main route to one of the manhattan bridges.