Whatever the price, let's value our black cabs
12.04.10
"We used to be the knights of the road," a black cab driver told me last night. "Now we're in the gutter."
I tried to console him: "You can turn in tiny circles!" but he was unmoved. With Addison Lee et al, more night buses and illegal minicabs poaching their customers, plus the recession, he felt his trade has been brutally wounded.
It is not just their business which is being battered, though. Many Londoners love to bash cabbies: moaning that they are too expensive, too fond of their own voices and more Right-wing than the boys of the Bullingdon Club. Oh yes, and they complain too much about how tough it is to be a cab driver.
But it is hard: just think what they put up with. I often ask taxi drivers about nightmare customers; a drunken couple rutting in the back with the man's hairy bottom pressed against the glass screen was one's highlight. Then there are the more ordinary annoyances: the people who can't pay, or being forced to clean up after someone's sloshed spewing.
This isn't the main reason they deserve our gratitude, though.
The service taxis provide may be costly but it is a crucial one. They are a fifth emergency service for the injured, inebriated or just plain exhausted who can't face the usual schlep home.
And safety at night comes cheap for a couple of tenners. Cabs are not a perfectly risk-free mode of transport, of course, as the string of sexual attacks committed by the "black cab rapist" John Worboys proved in the most horrific way. But the fact that they are registered makes them a lot less dangerous than jumping into an unlicensed minicab.
When I was 11, a friend's mum put us in one of these shouldn't-be-on-the-road vehicles. I spent the whole journey frantically praying, believing - in my pre-teen paranoia - that there was a good chance we would end up dead in some dingy cellar somewhere. "Never again," I thought. So to me, hackney carriages will always be a symbol of safety on our streets.
As for their being talkative, I like a good cabbie chat. It's like going to the hairdressers: you emerge with a lighter purse but having discussed - and probably disagreed over - how to fix the world's ills. A snip for £20.
Plus they give us one up on the Yanks, thanks to their satnav-beating knowledge of the capital's streets. The last time I was in New York, the cab driver got us lost - in Manhattan. Just to live up to the "Big Apple, bad cab" cliché, he hardly spoke English and the car smelt of wacky baccy.
Those who still baulk at the fares, however, will have fresh cause for complaint in the autumn when a new fixed-fare scheme comes in. A seven-mile trip from Leicester Square on Friday or Saturday night will cost £30.
This sounds expensive, but I don't think taxi drivers are ripping us off: their costs are high too. They suffer from the soaring price at the pump even more than the rest of the nation's motorists. Then there's the licence fee and the cost of their vehicles.
London's taxi drivers aren't perfect. After I was nearly run over by one when cycling earlier this year - his fault -he launched into an expletive-ridden tirade. And I have often faced a snotty refusal when I ask to be taken south of the river. It's Camberwell, people, not Kent. But knowledgeable, safe and with clean vehicles, most of London's cabbies deserve our praise - and our pounds.
Source; thisislondon.co.uk
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