For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

Top 10 Worst Places to Catch a Taxi (05.03.2010)

I have recently found the site mapvivo.com where travellers can relate their experiences, as it’s coming up to deciding your travel arrangements for this year I would suggest that you check it out, it’s a great source of information and frankly very funny. At the risk of being accused of plagiarism, although the author’s consent has been given, I think this post is worthy of inclusion in CabbieBlog.

Well, maybe not the absolute worst, but a catalogue of experiences around the world which explain why a taxi is always my last resort for getting from A to B, and why I’d rather walk, take public transport or a bike just about anywhere.

Disclaimer: Many taxi drivers are polite, courteous, professional and very honest. It’s the others that give you a bad rap, which are the ones I am complaining about…

BANGKOK: Don’t expect taxi drivers to know the way – particularly if there has been a bad crop recently in the countryside, since in these times your taxi driver is likely to be an out of work farmer who is unlikely to find his way home, let alone that restaurant you just asked for. In fact, it may take 2 or 3 different attempts before you find a taxi driver that knows where your destination is; let alone how to get there.

If you are lucky the driver will tell you that he has no idea where the destination is in advance, otherwise he’ll just drive you around for a little while.

Having somebody write the destination down for you (or learning how to pronounce words in Thai) can help, but not always, as can calling the place where you are staying and asking them to talk the taxi home for you.

NEW YORK: Not that bad actually. Relatively inexpensive and efficient, but smells horrible and don’t expect much in the way of courtesy – either from the driver or other passengers competing for the same cab.

New York cabs win a prize for being the largest vehicles with the smallest passenger space, but definitely count as one of the world’s better taxi experiences.

It could be said that there is not much difference between driving a cab in London than driving one in New York – except that we speak in English and have to rely on our brains to get us from one part of the city to another and not rely on a numerical grid system.

LONDON: Encyclopaedic knowledge of London’s streets, spacious cabs, polite drivers (to passengers at least – comments made to other road users are part of the entertainment) and cheap fares. London is Taxi heaven. I can’t disagree with those fine words.

Until midnight that is, when the black cabs go home and unlicensed mini-cabs take over to fill the demand. Beware of these guys: people tell of drivers rolling joints whilst driving with their knees, whilst others talk of drivers who’ve obviously had several already. A phone call followed by a quick detour to help a friend of the driver escape from a crime scene is also not unheard of. Police reports describe far more sinister doings, particularly concerning women travellers.

ZÜRICH: If your hotel isn’t one of the five biggest in Zürich then bring your own map, or chose a driver with a GPS. English is rarely spoken and German or other Swiss languages are not guaranteed. And bring plenty of cash – that number on the meter really is the cost.

Definitely the most expensive and most often lost taxi drivers in the world. On one occasion I spent 30 minutes while a taxi tried to find my (rather large) hotel, asking for directions from several pedestrians on the way. We eventually found it, and a long argument ensued over the expectation that I pay the meter fare for the whole duration. Which I won only narrowly.

ROME: If you manage to actually find a cab in Rome then please comment. I’ve given up each time as taxis are scarce in Rome, and drivers tend to strike (whilst blocking traffic in the city) every time the city tries to increase the number of taxi licences.

In a blog post, Pauline relates to an experience where a driver busy taking a phone call made them wait outside before allowing them in, in the rain, with the meter running (including the approach fare), for 10 minutes. That’s service.

PARIS: Generally professional, but basically rude. Can make a bit of a fuss when asked to take you somewhere that’s not totally convenient for them – consider this when choosing destinations such as out of the way places where they won’t pick up a huge fare right after.

I once spent 15 minutes in a taxi being complained at by the driver because he ‘claimed’ he would lose money driving to my destination (near the airport). I paid him 1/3rd more than the fare as a good-will token, but it didn’t make him happy and he drove off refusing to give a receipt.

INDIA: Finding a taxi or auto rickshaw is easy. Just wait by the road and they’ll soon be fighting over you. The family member’s shop or restaurant that they recommend is never as good as the place you originally wanted to go to, so be persistent and insist that you want to go to your original destination. Like many attempted transactions in India it comes down to a war of attrition.

Taxis are cheap enough to rent for the day in some cases, so make sure you enjoy the unique spectacle of road transport in India, complete with sleeping cows in the middle of the carriage way, oncoming trucks in the wrong lane, constant use of the horn, etc.

CAIRO: Similar to India, except they continue to fight over you after you’ve arrived. In fact, Taxi drivers will follow you around all day, stalking you. The family member’s shop or restaurant is also never as good as the place you actually wanted, but in many cases they will take you there anyway and just pretend that’s what you asked for.

Don’t be alarmed by the fact that obeying traffic signals are optional in Cairo, meaning that they are always ignored, and on a three lane carriageway there will be at least four cars abreast.

However, if you can find an honest one (and don’t rely on a hotel concierge for this) then they can make excellent tour guides.

Don’t expect the negotiated price to remain the same for the entire journey; it usually has doubled when you get to your destination. If you are unlucky to have a driver who speaks English, a warning, they will talk to you whilst driving as you sit in the back seat, but face to face.

CHINA: Don’t lose the piece of paper with your destination written in Chinese, unless you are good at charades, as you shouldn’t count on being able to pronounce your destination no matter how much you practice. Otherwise Chinese taxis are honest, professional and courteous, if a little erratic in their driving style.

WARSAW: Very keen to get going to the extent that over eager drivers can slam doors shut before all appendages are inside the taxi. It can really hurt.

Speeds on wet roads defy the laws of physics (or at least common sense).

Generally, taxis in Warsaw are very reasonable and honest providing you take a licensed taxi, not one of the private taxis that lurk around airport arrivals and on popular streets.

For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

Moving targets (26.02.2010)

I’m beginning to suspect that London cabbies are reviled with the same vigour as bankers, estate agents and MPs (well, maybe not as much as MPs).

Recently a colleague of mine had his rear window smashed by local children as he sat waiting in a traffic jam in East London. Previously like me he’s had stones thrown at his cab, and had pedestrians hitting his vehicle with their hands as they cross the road.

It also makes you wonder why some Lycra louts of the cycle world get their kicks out of spitting at cab drivers. This Lycra-clad posers cycle up beside cabbies and spit in their face before peddling off, which I personally consider it the most offensive assault possible and rather cowardly when you realise how difficult it is to pursue the obnoxious assailant responsible, I now find myself asking the question, is it a new craze?

The whole practice has me wondering whether they only target cab drivers, like to young vandals who throw stones. Do they maybe mark up their hits on their bike frames, like World War II fighter pilots? Or perhaps it’s an individual avenger who was once wronged by a cab driver who refused to go south of the River and is now wreaking his revenge.

I suppose we could try fitting spittoons on the side of the cab – but well away from the driver’s window of course!

Are we all really so bad? Poison pen letters are invited to the comments section at the bottom of this post.

For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

A tale of two cities (23.02.2010)

Our first city is at the cutting edge of information technology providing multi-lingual customer services to the world, while the second is struggling to provide high speed broadband access for its customers. One is taking its population out of poverty with the Globalization and World Cities Study Group ranking it as an “Alpha world city”, while its counterpart has a rising unemployment rate of 9.4 per cent of the workforce with increasing numbers are reliant on the State.

The first city was placed seventh in the list of “Top Ten Cities for Billionaires” by Forbes magazine and first in terms of those billionaires’ average wealth. The other’s economy is not so rosy with the government forecasting its debt will soar to an eye-watering £1.1 trillion by 2011.

The emerging city’s transport has 11 million passenger movements a day on its rail and bus services, in comparison with about half of that number who have to endure delay and breakdowns with the other city’s aged transport infrastructure.

With 24,000 cabs providing transport for the older city’s 7 million population the emerging city’s population of 14 million inhabitants are having their aging fleet of 55,000 cabs replaced, unfortunately in the older city, whose cabbies have been licensed for over 350 years, they have to provide a service with much older vehicles due to their extortionate replacement prices.

Similarly both provide a rickshaw mode of transport. One regulated by price and service provided by operators who know their city like the back of their hand, the other’s rickshaws are vastly overpriced, unregulated (charging what they think they can get away with) and, driven by foreign “students” who’s inability to speak the native tongue is match by their navigational skills around a city founded by the Romans.
Drivers in the city of the sub-continent sound their horn at every opportunity and in some ways this is where there are similarities with drivers in the older city following suit.

As the excellent Channel 4 series of programmes entitled Indian Winter showed, Bombay (or as the BBC insists on calling it, contrary to what it’s known to the inhabitants, Mumbai) has many lessons which we Londoner’s could learn. Could it be that Bombay’s emerging dynamism has positioned it in a far more advantageous place in the world’s economy?

With London appearing in a downward spiral and Bombay’s pulling itself up by their bootstraps it’s only a matter of time until the former colonial power is overtaken by its former colony.

We Londoners consider ourselves to be citizens of the world’s most influential city, true it still has a lot to offer its residents but is now under threat from emerging economies as never before, but at least we have recently adopted the curry as our favourite meal.

For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

Driven from your drive (09.02.2010)

Before reading this post I should warn you that sitting or preferably lying down might lessen the risk of injury to yourself when reaching the end of this sorry tale.

Dr. Richard Dawood is the sort of conscientious doctor we would all like to have as our own. Anxious to be able to negotiate the congested streets of north London quickly should an emergency arise, he purchased a scooter.

He could park the scooter on the tarmac forecourt adjacent to his property, but to draw attention that this land was owned by him, and therefore private property, and not part of the adjacent flagstone pavement, he affixed to his wall a notice which read:

“This forecourt is private property and is not dedicated as a public footway”.

So far so good, indeed in 2001 when he received two parking tickets, although his scooter was parked on his own property, the chief executive of Camden Council wrote to the good doctor apologising for the error admitting he was parked on private land.

Then 2 years ago he received another ticket while parked in the same place and assumed another mistake had been made and wrote asking that the penalty be struck off.

After several letters (and more parking tickets) he was appalled to receive a reply informing him that Camden Council had reconsidered the matter and decided that his forecourt was part of the public footway, whether private or not, and would enforce the penalty notice.
When Dr. Dawood decided to take the case to a parking tribunal, the tickets were mysteriously cancelled just prior to the appeal dates. But five tickets were overlooked by the council and became the subject of a parking tribunal where the adjudicator reserved judgment, siting the case White v The City of Westminster this test case is regularly used by councils to penalise motorists on private land, but crucially if one wheel of their vehicle is on the public pavement.
Dr Dawood then applied for a judicial review of his case, and at this point I would earnestly advise you to hold on to something.

Lord Justice Sedley ruled that Dr. Dawood did own the land or rather, the subsoil marked on his deeds, but the Tarmac surface above was subject to public access, and because there was no physical barrier between the road and the Tarmac strip, marking restrictions did apply.

This ruling means in effect that unless you erect a physical barrier at the point where your drive abuts the highway it could technically be accessed by the public and therefore is now fair game for traffic wardens, and you just know that the Traffic Taliban of Camden Council will use every opportunity to use this loophole to milk the motorist.

For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

London’s Eco Warriors (05.02.2010)

According to most politicians if we don’t cycle everywhere (leaving our electric car in the garage), buy our food at “the farm gate” and live like a Hobbit in a woodland setting you’re not eco friendly. From this they extrapolate that living in the countryside benefits the environment, while we urban dwellers are virtually killing polar bears with our bare hands.

This perception of Londoners could be set to change as a result of a recent book by David Owen entitled Green Metropolis. The American urbanologist proposes you move to a city, the biggest you can find, if you want to save the planet.

Building of new eco towns with zero VAT and the opportunity to show their green credentials might be an attractive proposition to many builders, but David Owen asserts that building new in the form of energy-guzzling steel and glass boxed and towers, which are usually unadaptable for later re-use, on Green Belt land has a carbon footprint that’s a disaster.

For we Londoners on the other hand, have a carbon “sink” of buildings, many dating from the Victorian era needing only central heating upgrades or new windows and a lick of paint to transform them into houses, flats, schools, shops or offices that will last for years, and as these long ago constructed buildings share walls, roofs, ceilings and heating systems they are more economical en masse than stand alone structures in the middle of a Norfolk field.

Our politicians with their “green” credentials have all but obliterated public transport from rural areas, forcing the population to use a car for almost every journey, many making two journeys each way to drop children at school or fetch a partner from the station.

Londoners cycle, walk or use public transport to get around the capital; we have more buses in the capital than you can shake a stick at, while after work we crowd into local shops, restaurants, pubs or theatres without having to travel vast distances to enjoy our leisure pursuits, and as I keep telling my customers, they are blessed with the world’s finest taxi service, taking up to six people per vehicle, making it one of the most green public transport vehicles on the road, but then I would say that wouldn’t I?