[wyager]

I travel all the time, and I have never, ever come across a taxi service in any city that wasn't horrible. That's why it's so frustrating to me when people get on the bandwagon to ban Uber or lyft and say "just take a taxi!"; only someone who hasn't been forced to take a lot of taxis would say something like that.

[Gustomaximus]

London has an excellent service with black cabs. Completely professional service in every way. The only group I feel sorry for with the ride-sharing taking out their business.

FYI it takes about 3 years of learning 25,000 London streets to get a cab licence. And they really know it. In 4 years of London I once had a cabbie ask me where my zone 2 50m long alley was I lived on. I gave him the cross st and he was straight there then.

If interested an article on it: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/10/t-magazine/london-taxi-te...

[joncrocks]

Agreed that 'the knowledge' means that a taxi will get you where you need to go and probably by a good route, but whether you can actually find a black cab will be very dependent on where you currently are.

Certain places in Zone 1, no problem, but start moving out to zone 2/3 and the number of them about drop off precipitously. Which is where the newer app-based services shine, essentially taking away more from the minicab business (who don't have to complete 'the knowledge') than the cabs.

[wyager]

> FYI it takes about 3 years of learning 25,000 London streets to get a cab licence.

What a ridiculous waste of time in 2017. That certainly drives up costs unnecessarily.

[maverick_iceman]

What's the point of spending 3 years when you have GPS?

[Gustomaximus]

These days I feel it' more about the commitment and professionalism that goes with the effort to pass this test. In that most other countries cabbies are a lower skilled, often new immigrant job. This comes with certain problems from taking you on the long route intentionally or not, to theft and rape (note: I understand this is completely the minority bad apples). With black cabs you had non of this concern. It was a great service that bucked the usual taxi driver complaints you see everywhere else in the world.

[jschwartzi]

I used to take taxis, but there's a whole world of difference between not having any idea what a trip will cost or how long you have to wait, and getting an estimate and seeing how many cars are available within a few blocks. I will never use a taxi in cities with Uber.

[coredog64]

I traveled to Dublin on business two years ago and I absolutely loved the Hailo app. I could get a cab, see where the driver was (i.e. wait out of the rain), know how long the wait was going to be and approximately how much the fare would be. I associated my credit card with the app and could pay as well.

There was a competitor app (can't recall the name) but most of the drivers said they drove for both. IIRC Hailo took a 10% cut, but all the drivers agreed it was worth it to find fares.

[jschwartzi]

There's Curb, here in the US, but it's basically useless because it doesn't do the two things I want: give me short wait times, and estimate fares. It gives estimates, but every cabbie I've taken gets angry when I tell them what they are. It sucks.

[adevine]

> That's why it's so frustrating to me when people get on the bandwagon to ban Uber or lyft and say "just take a taxi!"

Does anybody really say that? I live in Austin, where we did essentially ban Uber and Lyft, and even then I didn't hear anybody who was for the tougher regulations on ridesharing argue that taxis don't suck.

[Taek]

Hong Kong has excellent taxis. Cheap, ubiquitous, I forget but they may have been cash only. I forget the exact prices but I want to say my average trip was like $4 and it was like only $12 to take a trip across the city.

Uber was thoroughly outcompeted. Slower to get one, four times the price, but I guess the cars were usually Tesla or something similarly fancy.

[nickonline]

I was in Hong Kong last week. The cabs are indeed cash only, making it extremely annoying to take one as a business expense.

Ubers were everywhere and most certainly not outcompeted as you suggest, the longest I had to wait was 4 minutes. With a huge expat community not everyone can speak Chinese and being able to input the address ahead of time skipped a lot of mucking around with translation apps when a driver can't speak or read English.

[prawn]

I'm in Adelaide (South Australia) and the taxis here are generally quite decent. Not without fault, but polite enough, clean, etc. Almost everywhere else though, I avoid them whenever I can.