I wanted to jump in on this thread. I live in Dallas-Fort Worth, which is a huge market for Uber/Lyft. We had basically no taxi service. There were a few taxies with inflated fares that services the airports. High airport pricing. Downtown parking was up there too. This transportation market doesn't really support full-time taxi drivers.
However, this is a huge part time market. Since Uber/Lyft showed up, the airport lots have dropped in price and a TON of people drive before and after work. I'll talk to morning Uber drivers and they'll say "Yeah, my job starts at 9 downtown, so I can do 2-3 airport runs than go to the office". Lots of evening drivers too with events. When I would have to go downtown for meetings, it was cheaper on my company for me to put an Uber on the company than mileage/parking with my own car.
Almost driver I talk to is retired and drives either morning/evening, or is a normal working person who wants to put their car to use for 2-3 hours. It has provided tons of service to a market that just couldn't support full-time taxis.
This is also about car utilization. We have a 2002 with 100,000 miles that has about the same annual repair cost as the 2007 with 211,000 miles. Cars break with both age and usage and most cars can support 20,000 miles a year on them for 12+ years and Uber/Lyft (and now Turo) are ways to put that asset to use before it depreciates away.