7 years ago you'd have to jump into a yellow cab before telling the rider if you were going from Manhattan to Brooklyn or Brooklyn to Brooklyn. If you told them before you got in, they'd speed off.<p>You used to have to walk to arterial roads in hopes of finding a yellow cab (in the outer boroughs). That is if you lived in neighborhoods that the article points out now skews towards Lyft. Well to do, post gentrification areas. If you didn't live in those neighborhoods, forget finding a yellow cab.<p>If you didn't find a yellow cab, you call a car service like Arecibo or Eastern. You say "73 Atlantic Ave, at Hicks st.", they say "10 minutes" and hang up. 25 minutes later a beat up town car with an illegal tint job pulls up, and you walk to the passenger door and knock on the window, or, if the window no longer works, open the rear passenger door -- but you don't get in. Instead you say the neighborhood you are going and the guy sort of waffles and says... 20. You say, forget it and go to close the door (but you don't), he says 18. You say 12, he says 15. You get in the car. Last week you paid 10 for the same ride.<p>The last time I called an UberT, a few years ago, the green taxi pulled up and someone ran over and threatened to fight me since they'd hailed the cab first. That's the last time I messed around with the old way of doing things and it sounds like a lot of New Yorkers feel the same way.
So since this information was so hard to pull out of the article, I've summarized it according to the weekly ride-share dominance chart[0]. Pre #DeleteUber, Uber sat at about ~75% of the weekly rideshare dominance. Currently, Uber sits at about ~68.5% of weekly ride share dominance. While it sounds like there were about half a million people that requested their account be deleted, at least in NYC (remember these charts are JUST NYC ride hailing) the campaign has had a negligible impact.<p>Judging by the demographic of people that protest, and are protesting on twitter, I'd be more curious about judging the impact of #DeleteUber by looking at ride-hailing rides around epicenters of people younger than 30. Fortunately though, he covered this also, touching on Lyft's growth in Brooklyn. I'd also be curious about ride hailing stats around universities too.<p>[0] <a href="http://cdn.toddwschneider.com/taxi/update2017/ridehail_market_share.png" rel="nofollow">http://cdn.toddwschneider.com/taxi/update2017/ridehail_marke...</a>
This is one of the more interesting things that I learned from the article:<p>"<i>Uber’s share of all ride-hailing trips has generally declined since 2015 as more competitors entered the NYC market, even as its total number of trips has increased dramatically.</i>"<p>That would have me worried, if I was an investor in Uber.
In NYC, Juno is cheaper in most circumstances, and you get better drivers. Otherwise, Via or Lyft. There are so many options instead of cludgey old Uber.
See, I guess I'm funny about cabs. For my lifestyle, I mostly ride the MTA - buses, subway, etc. I plan based on that cost and timing. When I've had an interview and needed to take a direct above ground route, I always take a yellow cab. I also make it very visible to the driver that I'm photographing the driver's number and name before I enter the vehicle. I don't do Uber/Lyft because I don't trust their consumer protections as much as I do those from the City or the T&LC.<p>Of course, I also have a prepaid phone & I have no desire to waste my data on hailing a cab. And I prefer to pay in cash where possible.