Oh, and my mom has bigger problems. Cabs pass her by at Manhattan hospitals. Of course no one knows drivers' intents for sure, but there is some quick eyeballing, i'm sure, of whether the potential passenger is B&T (Bridge and Tunnel -- NYC Yellow cabs hate B&T passengers because they often have to deadhead back to Manhattan on the return trip -- so they take pains to avoid B&T passengers, which favors wealthier Manhattan residents and harms residents of other boroughs.) Uber/Lyft has been a lifesaver for her.
There is also a larger problem Uber solves (one of many) -- once you lose density (i.e., outside airport/centercity) it is hard to hail a cab, so you have to dial a cab. You dail, they invariably say "wait outside be there in 5 min" -- sometimes they show up in 5min, sometimes 10min, sometimes 30min, sometimes never. Variable pricing and GPS tracking solves this.
A lot of these problems were traditionally not problems at all, but the NYC transit system has ground to a halt on evenings/nights/weekends in the past 3-5yrs, so people are relying increasingly on Uber/Lyft and pooled rides for things traditionally accomplished via mass transit.
Variable pricing solves this for people with the ability to pay. Rationing scarce goods by wealth is not necessarily a better overall outcome then distributing scarce goods by lottery.
Also, if full-time night-shift cabbies are driven out of business by part-time rideshares, you may end up in a situation where the only night-time service available - ever - is at surge pricing. This is less of an issue in NYC, then it is in smaller towns.
That said, people have voted quite a bit with their wallets and accepted surge pricing to solve the old problem of uncertainty. When I used to be a consultant and go to the airport every Monday morning, i'd have to leave 40+minutes earlier just in case the dial-a-cab randomly decided not to show up for 30min. That problem has mostly gone away.
Same thing for rainy weather -- cabs would disappear. That was legitimate because the cost of driving is indeed higher in rain (fewer rides per hour) and thus deserves more compensation. Instead...the old way was...dial-a-cabs would just stop answering their phone during storms, etc.
Sometimes people did nasty things like call 2 separate cab companies, go with the first arrival, and leave the other one hanging (another problem solved by ride-hailing services, who have the concept of identity and reputation scores.)
I think you have this backwards. The traditional explanation is that it's harder to get a cab when it rains because demand goes up, not down, because no one wants to walk in the rain. The more complex modern explanation[1] is that the higher demand but slower traffic offset, so cab drivers make the same amount in the rain as at other times. In either case, I don't think the cabs actually "disappear", rather they are all occupied. Or maybe this is what you meant?
[1] http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/11/why-you-cant-ge...
And it's generally far better overall to pay with money. If you pay with money, then someone gets that money - Uber drivers earn more through surge pricing, in this instance.
If you pay with time, then that time is simply gone forever.
Uber solved many of these types of issues democratized access to taxi rides.
I’ve never really understood the
problem Uber is solving in the UK
Times I've resorted to Uber include when I visited Bournemouth and got scammed by a driver who "didn't have change" for £20 on a £16 fare, when I visited Coventry where taxis don't accept credit cards, and when I visited Montreal where their homegrown uber-equivalent doesn't support foreign phone numbers.
In other words, fairly basic service delivery issues that local taxis could easily solve, but that for some reason they haven't solved.