Dude, there's a reason that as soon as Uber showed up everybody dropped taxis like a hot potato ASAP and they had to resort to physically blocking roads and disruptive protests to get people to use them again.

Taxis suck. They've always sucked. They're expensive, they all try to scam the everliving dogshit out of you, "Black man can't get a cab" has been a thing for 50 years, and that's only in the places where taxis exist, which is not most places. Normally it takes effort and time to overcome the kind of institutional inertia something like taxi services have but man, taxis were just that fucking bad. Uber isn't perfect, but it sure as fuck beats a yellow cab.