I want to push back against your pushback as someone who’s lived in both NYC and the SF area. I agree with you that Uber barely made sense in Manhattan. I never once used it and taxis were plentiful.

I’ve since realized that in the US, NYC is an exception. When I first came to SF and Seattle for job interview related things, I used taxis, only to find out that the taxis were so terrible I never used them again:

- In the suburbs of Seattle, I was given a taxi chit from the place I was interviewing. I called in for a cab and had to wait over a half an hour for one to pick me up.

- In SF, the airport cab I was using had his GPS unmounted from his dash, and ended up handing me the machine and asking me to help him navigate from the back seat. Then when we got to the hotel, he lamented my choice to pay by credit card as it meant he would get the money much later than if he had cash. After I told him I didn’t have the circa $100 in cash he was charging, he sadly acquiesced, then proceeded to take a literal paper rubbing imprint of the card number before I could leave.

I like to say that the Bay Area made Uber make sense, both in terms of urban planning and in terms of how terrible taxis were.

And I think those may be related: if you can get around well in a place like NYC using public transit or walking, taxis have to be a lot more attractive in order to justify their existence. In SF or Seattle they had much less competition due to the suburban sprawl and worse public transit.