IMHO, this is a misconception.  Most of the benefit of Lyft&#x2F;Uber comes from app convenience, being cashless, mutual rating to weed out the jerks, carpooling efficiency, transparency (easy to get estimates and know if you overpaid), good customer support, and reliability in getting a ride, all of which are legal and which cab companies could have done.<p>They have a lot of room to raise prices before it outweighs those advantages.  Remember, people were using UberBlack (as &quot;UberCab&quot; way back then), which simply took existing, fully-insured car service drivers, which had no regulatory advantage, long before UberX&#x2F;Lyft.