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In my European country, taxi prices were exorbitant and taxi usage was very low. You only used taxis on very special occasions, like getting to your destination

In my European country, taxi prices were exorbitant and taxi usage was very low. You only used taxis on very special occasions, like getting to your destination from an airport or train station. Once Uber came, taxi prices dropped drastically and several new local companies formed to try to compete, many of them with their own (less slick, but still very usable) apps. Overall, Uber seems to have introduced healthy competition and taxi usage has changed from rare to commonplace.

jbn 7y ago
"In my European country, taxi prices were exorbitant and taxi usage was very low." <-- this is so true. in France (to give another example), this is even worse: in Paris you don't pick the taxi, the taxi picks you (and if where you're going doesn't fancy them, they will refuse you... which they legally cannot do, but they still do it). Taxis were an entrenched rent-seeker, they were in need of disruption, for the public good. I'm not necessarily a big fan of Uber, but the taxis as a corporation deserve the competition. And that's not even taking about the phone app and its capabilities, which were just out of reach of regular taxis (even the taxi companies that own a large fleet, these are still very small and have no tech capability). IMHO that's another front where the competition was healthy.