Is it just me, or does anyone else wonder why there are always a queue of taxi's waiting to service that long line of people in the 'Taxi Queue' at most airports?
I travel a fair bit to customer sites, mainly in Europe but also occasionally America's and Asia. I have rarely, with the odd exception, taken a taxi from or to the airport. An airport is always one of the most highly public serviced locations, providing plenty of bus, coach, train or tram links at frequent intervals.
Mostly a public service will be far quicker than taking a taxi, as you avoid the traffic jams that are always present on the airport ring roads, and mostly you are going to be travelling to the nearest city center for a travel connection or ultimate destination, which is normally also full of traffic jams.
It is also cheaper by a magnitude of 10 or 20, and the freedom of choice you have with where to step on or off or rejoin is far superior to a taxi service.
I also travel for business, so can reclaim the expense my travel, but even so, I still prefer public services.
So who are all of these people taking taxi's? Anthropophobic? Agoraphobic? lazy? ignorant? I struggle to generalise, but with the amount of taxi's servicing those queues I see, I can only wonder.
Coincidental case in point, two guys just wandered in to the airport lounge, one complaining the taxi driver took all back streets to get here, the other complaining of being stuck in traffic, I took the metro and bus 119, 30 minutes relaxed from Prague central to terminal 2.
Here are some off the top of my head airports with great public service connections:
I travel a fair bit to customer sites, mainly in Europe but also occasionally America's and Asia. I have rarely, with the odd exception, taken a taxi from or to the airport. An airport is always one of the most highly public serviced locations, providing plenty of bus, coach, train or tram links at frequent intervals.
Mostly a public service will be far quicker than taking a taxi, as you avoid the traffic jams that are always present on the airport ring roads, and mostly you are going to be travelling to the nearest city center for a travel connection or ultimate destination, which is normally also full of traffic jams.
It is also cheaper by a magnitude of 10 or 20, and the freedom of choice you have with where to step on or off or rejoin is far superior to a taxi service.
I also travel for business, so can reclaim the expense my travel, but even so, I still prefer public services.
So who are all of these people taking taxi's? Anthropophobic? Agoraphobic? lazy? ignorant? I struggle to generalise, but with the amount of taxi's servicing those queues I see, I can only wonder.
Coincidental case in point, two guys just wandered in to the airport lounge, one complaining the taxi driver took all back streets to get here, the other complaining of being stuck in traffic, I took the metro and bus 119, 30 minutes relaxed from Prague central to terminal 2.
Here are some off the top of my head airports with great public service connections:
- JFK
- San Francisco
- Vancouver
- Heathrow, all terminals
- Bristol, UK
- Luton, UK
- Gatwick, UK
- Prague, Czech Republic
- Schiphol, Netherlands
- Charles de Gaulle, France
- Toulouse, France
I will update the list again when I am next waiting in an airport lounge...boarding now
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