I've used taxis in four major USA metro areas fairly extensively: Chicago, San Francisco, NYC, and South Florida (Ft. Lauderdale / Miami). NYC is mostly OK, al

I've used taxis in four major USA metro areas fairly extensively: Chicago, San Francisco, NYC, and South Florida (Ft. Lauderdale / Miami). NYC is mostly OK, although drivers are sometimes hard to understand. Chicago was a step below, but still OK. South Florida and SanFran were the worst. Dirty, awful, dangerous drivers. All of those cities are very expensive, often have trouble with credit cards, and didn't have a good way to hail a cab other than calling at the time. I can see why Uber in theory makes sense in those environments. I remember when Uber launched in Europe I got an email from someone there asking about Edinburgh (where I live). My response is that I don't see Uber doing well in Edinburgh. Right now, in Edinburgh, I can hail a cab with an app that lets me specify my route or drop a pin where I'm at for pickup. I can see the cab on the map driving towards me. I get an automatic ringback on approach. I can pay with stored cc information or corporate account. Cabs are impeccably clean, inexpensive, and the drivers are really great. They are all trained in First Aid and most are highly accessible (you can specify if you need accessibility on booking). They will help you with luggage, engage in chat, and it's a really great experience. There are also private hire companies that compete with the cabs. There is some tension there as those cars don't offer or require the accessibility of cars and training to their drivers, and they're on the same meter. I almost never use them. The black cab cars are really great to get in and out of particularly with luggage. So to sum up, Uber just isn't going to do that well here in my estimation.