On a trip to Calgary yesterday I ran a very scientific test. I left a bar on 5th avenue last night after last call, walked across the street to a cab stand at a hotel and got in a cab. The driver took me a few blocks to pick up my bag and then drove me to Altadore. He was pleasant the whole time and happily accepted my debit card as payment. This morning I used Uber to get back downtown. The car took eight minutes to pick me up and then took me back downtown. Again, the driver was friendly and happily took me where I needed to go in the most direct route.
Both fares were similar.
My take is that cabs are great if you are near a hotel and can walk in. Uber is great if you need to call one to pick you up. You find out who is going to pick you up and can see the drivers progress. I also think uber is completely unnecessary if the city allowed the market to set the number of cab licenses and allowed an app like Lyft to exist. A caveat though is that I have had several issues in the past with cab drivers refusing to accept plastic forms of payment. I also used to have problems in Edmonton getting cabs to take you to Leduc from the airport. The trip is too short in their mind and they would continuously argue with you. You typically had to be very firm or offer extra cash to get the ride.
I have used Uber a half dozen times in Edmonton as well and had very similar results.
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