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Uber arrived in Calgary last month to fanfare, a W. Brett Wilson celebrity ride, the creation of an amusing unregulated cab (Associated Cab’s “Taxy”) and a whole lot of curiosity.

We were curious, too, so we decided to put the new service to the test against the city’s traditional cab services — and what better way to do that than going on a newsroom lunch run?

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We started by meeting in Bridgeland to order up a sushi lunch for our newsroom colleagues; then, laden with our takeout bags, we simultaneously called a cab and ordered an Uber car and sat back to see which one showed up first.

Our goal was to do a wholly unscientific, side-by-side comparison of the two services — Jamie Dirom took the taxi and Meghan Potkins took the Uber car.

And the winner? Uber — though the results were pretty close.

When it came to response time, Uber arrived in six minutes and 20 seconds — more than three minutes faster than the cab — and might have arrived sooner had the Uber driver not circled the block twice, looking for the address (similarly, Jamie’s taxi driver called to check where he was).