Taxi Driver Online

This is half correct, but half utter nonsense.

Those who have a fair idea of the Essex geography might spot the schoolboy error in the article.


London Southend Airport named as having the most expensive airport taxi fare in Europe

https://www.essexlive.news/news/essex-n ... ts-wrapper

It's also the third most expensive in the world, according to a recent study

With travel beginning to open up around the world, people will be budgeting for a long-awaited holiday.

After over a year of international travel being banned due to the coronavirus pandemic, many people will be making plans to jet off on their international travels.

But for many passengers, the transport from the airport to their final destination is an afterthought, and sometimes more expensive than they had anticipated.

A study conducted by FleetLogging.com researched every international airport’s taxi fares and then mapped the results.

They compiled a list of all the airports by country and then used Rome2Rio and Booking.com Taxis to find the price of a taxi ride to the city centre it serves before calculating the price per kilometre for each airport.

And one Essex airport has been ranked as the most expensive in Europe and third most expensive in the world, according to the study.

If you get a taxi from London Southend Airport to Central London, you may be in for an eye-wateringly expensive surprise, as it’s been named the priciest airport ride in Europe, setting you back £104.

It's 20km, or just under 12.5 miles, to London from Southend Airport, meaning that it costs £8.32 a mile per taxi trip.

This also makes the airport ride the third most expensive in the world, just behind Hiroshima airport in Japan (£119.89) and Oita Airport, also in Japan (also £119.69).

On the other end of the scale, however, the cheapest airport-city taxi ride costs just 73p and is found at Cadjehoun Airport in Cotonou, Benin.

The data comes after the town of Southend was ranked as one of the 'most annoying' place to park your car in the UK according to the number of complaints on Google.

My Essex geography isn't quite up to scratch, but a comment left on Essex Live points out that it's a tad more than 12.5 miles from Southend Airport to London, in fact it's more like 40 miles

The Fleet Logging study looks like a huge international exercise by a US-based website, so you might expect the odd error to creep in, but you'd expect a journalist on Essex Live to realise that Southend to London is a bit further than 12.5 miles

And in fact it looks like it's not even Fleet Logging's fault, because they don't seem to be looking at mileage rates, but just the total cost of getting from the airport to the relevant city, which makes sense if it's your total flight costs you're considering. So the reason Southend looks very expensive is simply because it's quite far from London, rather than the mileage rate per se.

These graphics are a bit big for this forum, but they illustrate the substantial nature of the study.

The full page is available here:

https://fleetlogging.com/expensive-airport-taxis/

In fact this on the official Southend Airport website reads like they're charging £110 to Liverpool Street Station even after the last train has left. Which is 40 miles, according to Google, so hardly off the scale

https://southendairport.com/getting-to-and-from/taxis

they have used tourism websites to calculate the price instead of route calculators

No wonder their figures are wrong

I would think that part of that £110.00 fare is going into Stobarts pockets but probably not as much as Heathrow are charging the London boys

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lack of modern legislation is the iceberg sinking the titanic of the transport sector

Whose figures are wrong? I didn't check the $/£ conversions, but don't think that's the main issue, and I can't see anything obvious wrong with Fleet Logging's figures

And looks like Essex Live have pulled yesterday's article

Anyway, Andrews Taxis who provide the airport taxis at Southend were mentioned several times in relation to the alleged bribe to the anti-Uber councillor

As an aside, had a look at their website yesterday, and something there I've never seen before - a page called 'Meet the Drivers', which lists every driver and (although not all have been filled in) gives their plate and registration numbers

Woefully out of date, though, and took me a couple of minutes to work out why they were running 04 Mondeos and 55 Vectras etc. But it's marked Copyright 2010 and the design looks like it's from an even earlier era, so to that extent easily explained:

https://andrewstaxis.com/meetdrivers.php

I was referring to the above both of which are not exactly known for their accuracy

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lack of modern legislation is the iceberg sinking the titanic of the transport sector