[jyl]

One of my friends drives for Uber. Part time, as are most Uber drivers. I think that if you drive only a couple, carefully selected hours - the highest demand times and surge times - it's possible to make a pretty good $/hour, but only for those couple hours. Driving Uber full time is, I hear, more or less a minimum wage job - maybe lower, once you include depreciation and insurance.

The only times I prefer a taxi over Uber are:

1) in Manhattan, where cabs are so common and, for me, part of the New York City experience, and

2) in Portland, where our largest taxi company, Radio Cab, is the best cab company I've ever experienced. It is a co-op, owned by the drivers. Punctual, professional, pleasant, pristine - if all cab companies were like RadioCab, Uber would never have succeeded.