So, I don’t understand why the traditional cab companies can’t simply function like Uber and have a nice app that makes it easy to get and pay for a cab.
Some cities have done that. See this link:
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-los-angeles-taxi-app-20150116-story.html
I can guess why it hasn’t been a huge success.
1) Lack of promotion - Uber and Lyft benefit from crowd sharing the concept and they spend a lot on marketing. Who markets/advertises for the Taxi app? Also notice the heavy hand of government in that article - cabbies who don’t use the app face $200/day fine! Sheesh! You cannot mandate success, you cannot expect a regulated bureaucracy to be competitive, and if each cab company servicing a different part of a city each uses their own app they basically have no efficiency to advertise or critical mass in size to become competitive with a global brand that recruits any person with a car and a license to their service.
2) Taxis generally cost more, using the city’s fare rate schedule. Uber charges whatever they want - sometimes more sometimes less. In theory this would be a supply/demand thing depending on time of day, demand for cars and drivers available. But since they are underwritten by billionaire investors they can underwrite a fare at a loss for competitive reasons.
3) The higher price of a cab is due in part because they are regulated. The cars have to be maintained properly, all safety features working, up to code, all permits paid, the driver is registered and fingerprinted etc. With Uber you get a little less certainty about all that (though there are never any guarantees either way, plenty of stories of felons and drunk drivers with taxi permits).
And that’s just off the top of my head. I feel badly for how taxi drivers have been screwed but see two sides. They have been screwed by the taxi commission but also by using the commission as a form of protectionism. This is in some ways a classic example of how regulation can destroy an industry, about how regulation inflated the cost of a service to generate revenues for the city and to protect those on the inside, and how it’s bureaucratic and noncompetitive nature prevented it from adapting to technology ultimately leading to a disruptive (you might even call it a “black market”) service.