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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
