I like the general balanced approach you are taking, but I have to critique a few elements.
Service dependability - I take cabs exclusively, and, while I can't comment on other markets, I have deep knowledge of the bay area taxis. First, it's important to note, that even when they are operating in "normal mode" - you can never, ever quickly get a taxi on the peninsula. Minimum time is always about 15-20 minutes, and frequently 30 minutes. Also, when it's busy, or late - forget it, you will not get a taxi. Compare this to Uber, that works hard to ensure you will always have a ride, regardless of time, level of busy. And yes, basic economics therefore suggests that in order to make that happen, you will have to vary the price. But, I would definitely like to have the choice of taking a more expensive ride, then no ride at all.
Non-Discrimination: You've got it backwards. Taxis discriminate all the time based on every conceivable factor. Uber doesn't even let the driver know where you are going, and the driver is committed to picking you up before he sees if you are young or old, black or white, male or female. About all they can discriminate on is how well you treat them (Drivers rate passengers).
Your Driver tracking thing is a long stretch. A better example would be, "Taxi Drivers in general have been doing their job for a while, there is little churn, so it's unlikely you will get one that will rob or rape you, (though it's not unheard of, particularly with drunk passengers.) as those drivers who do that are probably going to get fired, and it's less common to get new drivers with taxi services than with uber.
Of the 200 or so RideShares, the worst one I got was a Driver who had only been working for Lyft for a week, and used her cellphone to get GPS directions to the airport, and came to a hard stop at a stop sign. Every other one has been excellent, courteous, and clean safe cars. I have no end of horror stories of psychotic taxi drivers driving cars that sometimes wouldn't open from the inside.
Yeah I love Uber but the one thing that's really annoyed me the past couple of years is whenever it goes above 2x surge every UberX driver immediately "forgets" how to navigate the city. Even a couple of blocks out of the way means a couple of bucks extra on your fare at surge pricing levels. Uber definitely has this data, I would love to see them release it given their commitment to data transparency. Even some really simple metric like average distance traveled vs. average GPS route distance during surge vs. normal should give a fairly unbiased view of how often this is happening.
> Uber doesn't even let the driver know where you are going, and the driver is committed to picking you up before he sees if you are young or old, black or white, male or female. About all they can discriminate on is how well you treat them (Drivers rate passengers).
But they do rate the passengers after they discover their destination, age, race and gender, so they could discriminate on that if they want to.
Service dependability - I take cabs exclusively, and, while I can't comment on other markets, I have deep knowledge of the bay area taxis. First, it's important to note, that even when they are operating in "normal mode" - you can never, ever quickly get a taxi on the peninsula. Minimum time is always about 15-20 minutes, and frequently 30 minutes. Also, when it's busy, or late - forget it, you will not get a taxi. Compare this to Uber, that works hard to ensure you will always have a ride, regardless of time, level of busy. And yes, basic economics therefore suggests that in order to make that happen, you will have to vary the price. But, I would definitely like to have the choice of taking a more expensive ride, then no ride at all.
Non-Discrimination: You've got it backwards. Taxis discriminate all the time based on every conceivable factor. Uber doesn't even let the driver know where you are going, and the driver is committed to picking you up before he sees if you are young or old, black or white, male or female. About all they can discriminate on is how well you treat them (Drivers rate passengers).
Your Driver tracking thing is a long stretch. A better example would be, "Taxi Drivers in general have been doing their job for a while, there is little churn, so it's unlikely you will get one that will rob or rape you, (though it's not unheard of, particularly with drunk passengers.) as those drivers who do that are probably going to get fired, and it's less common to get new drivers with taxi services than with uber.
Of the 200 or so RideShares, the worst one I got was a Driver who had only been working for Lyft for a week, and used her cellphone to get GPS directions to the airport, and came to a hard stop at a stop sign. Every other one has been excellent, courteous, and clean safe cars. I have no end of horror stories of psychotic taxi drivers driving cars that sometimes wouldn't open from the inside.