yay.....it's been years since I've been able to phone for a cab.  They much prefer to pick up on the street and they just don't respond to a phone request, so I have to walk down the hill to a main street.  Since I mostly want a cab in bad weather, this is an issue. 

As a consumer, using Uber isn't appealing because of the "cool" technology and fancy GPS maps. I use UBER because my experiances with hailing a traditional taxi are horrible. Part of the suit states that cabies are not allowed to pick and choose fairs as Uber is but traditional cabbie drivers do it all the time. It's happened to me up to three times in one night. I've also had to deal with cab drivers who spend the whole trip talking on their cell phones and not paying attention to where they're going or worse, not knowing their way around the city. I was in a taxi recentry that was driving 40 miles per hour on 93 South to drive up the price. Also, taxi drivers consistently pretend the credit card reader doesn't work to force the rider to pay cash. Uber isn't jusr successful because of it's technology, Uber is successful because huge taxi companies like the one filing the suit only care about gouging the customers to make as much of a profit as possible. They give little though at all about the rider's experiance.

The cab company needs to move into the 21st century and stop trying to protect their profits through regulations/laws.  Boston would be going backwards

conjames3:  " cabies are not allowed to pick and choose fair"     Learn to spell.

I've waited 45 minutes after calling for a cab at the Oak Grove "T" stop.     Then when I got the ride, I ended up paying full fare with other riders in the cab.           Uber is a game changer, and has me considering using mass transit more, knowing I can actually get a ride where and when I need one.       Cab companies are operating under an outdated and byzantine system.   Not only will they have to adopt this technology if they wish to remain in the game, but the regulations and restrictions they operate under will have to be modified.

If Boston and Boston-area cab companies were as professional, polite and reliable as Uber, I might think about going back to cabs. I have to admit, everytime I use Uber, I think of how great it is to bypass those rotten, nasty taxi dispatchers who lie and care nothing about his or her customers, who can't get a cab to your destination within the time frame he or she designates, and then snarls when the customer questions where the cab is. Uber figured out a better way to do this, and those dinosaurs who think they have you by the short hairs just because you want to pay for a service their company provides will have to find somewhere else to practice their abominable customer service. I wonder if the Registry of Motor Vehicles is hiring?

"Uber" is the best thing since sliced bread and to claim Uber will "stifle competition and limit consumer choice" is plain wrong. Passengers want efficiency and taxi companies want the status quo.

The readers comment with an ugly picture of Boston cabs, because we receive very poor service, and a price increase when there is more than one passenger, or tavelling luggage. This pricing increase that happens with more than one passenger is not permitted in most cities, except third world countries. Also, it is maddening that the majority of cab drivers do not know Boston streets or surrounding Boston area. A GPS is not always the best guide.

City council members who side with the taxi lobby do so at their own peril.  This group is almost universally reviled by the general public, and with good reason.  They've taken advantage of a deeply protectionist system of regulations to provide the worst possible legally permissable service for years (and sometimes not even that).

And the Globe does itself a disservice to even suggest that the cab companies' suit has real merit, or is anything other than a brazen attempt by a corrupt industry to stamp out something that might force them to upgrade their service.  Uber is, for all of its game changing conveniences, just a fancy way of booking private cars which are already subject to their own set of fairly strict regulations.  That cab companies are suddenly interested in subjecting these cars to the same regulations required to pick up street hails is both unsurprising and completely unjustified.  Street hails and Uber are fundamentally different things for the same reason that street hails and any other kind of hired car service are fundamentally different things.

The only people who would suggest otherwise are those with a financial interest in the status quo.

I find it amusing that a group that fails to self police it's drivers are suing over a service that allows people to bypass a system that has failed. The fact that so many cabs in Boston still refuse credit cards, will turn you down if the ride is not far enough, with the drivers refusing to get off thier cellphones or bluetooth devices while they drive. I got shafted with a $30.00 meter fare for a ten minute, two and half mile ride. Needless to say I did not pay that amount but had an intense argument with the driver, needless to say complaints to the company, city went unanswered, the driver simply went back to playing the hotels to rip off visitors.

It costs a lot of money for a medallion. Let the new service providers pay the same cost as the cab owners.

Boston has created what amounts to taxi monopolies and I don't see the benefit. In Revere, for instance, there are 5 or 6 cab companies for 50, 000 people. They offer the same service as Boston Cab for a much lower fare. The market should decide how many cabs are on the street, not some ancient law that makes hackney licenses worth hundreds of dollars.

Even the word is obsolete. Hackney was a horse used to pull a carriage.

Uber is a wonderful company. I mostly walk and use mass transit with Uber as a backup. All of the drivers I've had are safe drivers (most important), knowledgeable about the city, and courteous. The cars are very clean. After several experiences with dangerous drivers, drivers who don't know where they're going, drivers who don't speak English, have filthy cars, or all of the above, I will only hail a cab if I'm desperate, and even then I think twice. That's a real shame. The respected, trusted, professional cab driver seems to be a thing of the past in Boston and most other American cities.

To let competition come in without the burden of paying for a medallion is extremely unfair to the people in the industry who have played by the rules that were mandated to them by the city. Medallions cost their owners hundrds of thousands of dollars each. To make things fair, charge the

To make things fair , the city should collect hundreds of thousands of dollars from the "black car" services for each car in their fleet and then see what they charge for a ride.