Before Uber, we had taxi companies bidding for areas. Winning bid got a monopoly for that area. That company would often use subcontractors to have enough drivers. In exchange for monopoly they needed to guarantee a certain level of service. You could get sy taxi at any time to any where, at the same rate, without surge charges. Literally every taxi was new, high end, clean, safe and comfortable. Uber lobbied to change it to "free market" model, promising lower prices, better service. Monopoly areas were removed. We started getting drivers who were dodging taxes, couldn't navigate, used lower quality cars. It should I say that happened in some cities, because Uber doesn't operate in the smaller cities. We still have the same drivers here, in a smaller city but since there's no service level guarantee anymore, there's a ton of taxis available during peak hours but it might be impossible to get one in the middle of the night because it's not cost effective anymore to have drivers standing by. You can also forget about trying to get a taxi to or from to far from cities because that's not cost effective either. Prices have gone up as well. I've talked few dozen drivers and they've all hated the change.
But at least I can use an app if I wanted to
