I've spent about $700 on ridesharing in the past 6 weeks. $610 of that is on Lyft. $90 of that was on an Uber Black to get me from the airport when things were so slammed that there was no alternative. The Uber driver was new enough to not know my "perfect" score was due to having never ridden Uber before. Of the Lyft drivers, maybe 1/3 of them had previously driven for Uber. One of them still did. The other 2/3rds had never even considered it. When I talk to people about riding Lyft rather than Uber, they either say "of course" or "Why?" When I answer with "because they treat their drivers like shit" the answer is generally "that's not surprising." My prediction is that five years from now, taxi companies will no longer exist, ridesharing companies will be required to provide supplemental insurance to their drivers and the price will be vaguely higher. And Uber will be the Myspace of ridesharing.
Taxi companies will still exist, they'll just look and behave differently. That's a large and valuable network or resources.
I disagree. Speaking as an early user of Taxi Magic, the taxi networks have no more ability to adapt to the modern world than phonograph needle companies had to build CD players. There is also no "network" in taxi services. The only way a taxi driver can get fares is (A) visually, off the street (B) through central dispatch. Ridesharing apps move (A) well beyond line-of-sight and handle (B) so much more efficiently than a taxi dispatcher that it isn't even funny. The difference between the "co-op" model discussed above and the way the ridesharing companies work now is purely one of profit sharing. Right now, unfortunately, none of the ridesharing companies are profitable. That, more than anything, is the problem to solve.