You can only street hail a cab in NYC if you are in certain select portions of manhattan, and it isn't cab rush hour or cab switch over hour. Good luck hailing a cab in the middle of queens at any time of the day.
I've hailed cabs in Queens. I live in Greenpoint and there are times that hailing a cab is quicker than waiting for an UberX, especially now that the green cabs are becoming ubiquitous.
Cab switch over hour sucks, but I've also been in a busy parts of Manhattan with plenty of Uber cars showing on the app yet can't get an Uber car to my location.
I've also noticed a drastic decline in the state of UberX vehicles in the past few months (I assumer from their aggressive recruiting effort). Used to be every UberX that picked me up was very clean and typically nicer cars (occasionally getting picked up by Range Rovers or Town Cars). Now quite a few of the cars are messier/dirtier than any cab I've ever been in.
I'll continue to use Uber and UberX when convenient, but I've cut back quite a bit because the drop in quality.
Also key point: some groups of people--namely, white people and rich-looking people--are much more likely to be able to hail a cab. That isn't an issue with Uber/Lyft, so far as I can tell.
