Huh? Part of your comments is wrong. Lyft existed before Uber as zimrides. Not only that Lyft and another competitor Sidecar pioneered ride sharing - Uber start

Huh? Part of your comments is wrong. Lyft existed before Uber as zimrides. Not only that Lyft and another competitor Sidecar pioneered ride sharing - Uber started out as a black car service and borrowed it's current business model from those two. Even more, Lyft was the first to take on city regulators, when Uber was still a black car service and Uber initially opposed the move to make ride sharing legal and only jumped on the bandwagon when it looked like Lyft was going to succeed and eat Uber for lunch. It's actually the other way around- Uber exists because of Lyft (source of all this - the Upstarts by Brad Stone which I'm currently reading). But everything else you said I agree with: Taxis were just plain awful.