Quote:
Originally Posted by emathias
It's definitely true that the outer neighborhood benefit the most from Lyft/Uber. I can hail a cab in front of my home, but when I visit friends in areas without the taxi density of River North it's nice to have Lyft/Uber just a few minutes away from nearly any point in Chicago - I'll grant you that for sure.
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It's not just that they benefit, it's that the cab industry literally did not serve these areas. And no, cabbies can't find Milwaukee and Belmont, that's right by where I live. They can maybe find their way to the main intersection, but good luck getting them to go down the mess of angled side streets around there and pick you up. When I moved here before Uber, no one wanted to visit me because they couldn't get a ride home late at night. I had parties where drunk friends had to wait for well over an hour before they gave it up and walked to Logan Square and took the Blue line all the way downtown and back out on the Red. Now no one cares because Uber is almost instantaneous over here.
As I said, the grass is always greener. People always quickly forget how bad things once were. Sure cabs might be slightly better if you are trying to hail one in LSE, but outside of that they were and are terrible. I love how everyone used to shit on cab drivers as "dangerous aggressive drivers" and now the criticism is "Uber drivers don't drive fast or aggressively enough". Nothing has changed, cab drivers a far worse. They also block bike and bus lanes. They also stop in the middle of the street to drop people off. They do all the same shit as Uber drivers, but they charge more and don't have the advantages brought by technology. The sooner the cab industry collapses and is put out of its misery, the better.