Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ive lived in NYC for 10 years, and have never personally used Uber/Lyft. Its surprising to a lot of people, which is funny to me in a place with so many other options. So, besides taking friend's Ubers, maybe I dont know what I'm missing completely, but I always have enjoyed and preferred the experience of walking out into the streets and hailing a cab. It is one of the reasons this city was so appealing in the first…
I get the impression you live or spend most of your time in vibrant, perhaps wealthy neighborhoods like Williamsburg or just Manhattan. Your green cab story doesn't pan out in most of North Brooklyn outside of Williamsburg, they are invisible because the market dictates that it's too poor for them to bother to look for rides. Then there are the wealthier areas like Cobble Hill and Park Slope and so on - I wouldn't ex…
Its not complicated.
And yeah, the reason its hard to find cabs further out is because its too spread out. Areas further out than specific high traffic areas converging on the bridges into manhattan have and will always be a different story for cabs, yellow or green. Its ridiculously large and spread out, with very few active and high traffic avenues in between. It would be like a tree falling in the forest for a cab to be cruising 60th and 16th ave at 11pm on a thursday.
You definitely were seeing green cabs ON Flatbush (down by 9th) though, which was an improvement.
Uber/Lyft didnt solve that problem either, they just provided an app for the black cabs that were already there, a whole phone call away. Black cars never had surge pricing before Uber either, wonder what poor people think about that.